So why'd you really do it?
by Dreamingsinger
Summary: The last thing the Autobots expected was that Knockout would ever switch sides to join them. But why'd he do it? It's out of character. There are bound to be a few trust issues. But when he is badly injured, saving his team without even thinking about it, the 'bots begin to discover that their suspicious defector is far less confidant than they thought, and far more broken.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer; Don't own Transformers Prime, any characters, etc… same old usual disclaimer business. Hasbro owns it and I think they should keep it, as they write it better than I try to. I'm just doing this for fun, and not making any profit.**

 **Notes / I wanted to write a fanfic for while centered somehow around the basic idea of a 'con defecting to the Autobot side. But the question was which one, and how? Imagine my surprise when I finally finished the last season of TFP and then Predicons Rising and basically discovered I had been given a ready-made defector scenario just begging to become my plot. Yeah it's been done before… a lot! But hey I still want to write this anyway. Knockout deciding to join the Autobots, was not something I would have imagined the series actually doing in a million years. He was always a bad guy and he clearly loved it. I thought he was just a little too good at being bad, and had too much fun doing it. And of course we never got to see in the series how he would actually have done as a 'bot, or even if he was actually serious. I'm going to assume so, 'cause fanfiction, and 'cause I can. But how to make a very bad guy into at least a somewhat good guy? This got me thinking, and plotting…. And assuming there just had to be far more to the story, and that was just waiting to be written.**

 **I have a few chapters planned out already and I'll keep on writing. This shouldn't get too long I'm thinking. Hopefully everyone likes, or at least comment even if you don't.**

Arcee gave a groan of frustration as she reached for the next in a stack of little data discs, and took notice of the still overwhelming pile on the work table in front of her. She'd been busy with data entry and records updates for what felt like it had already been ages. Clearly she was getting pretty close to nowhere. Shaking her head, she inserted the little disc into the nearby drive, and looked back to the monitor as the info the disc contained scrolled up into the screen. She tapped her fingers against the work table in growing annoyance at the task, just as soon as she realized she was looking straight at another group of files full of horribly outdated information, and in need of updating.

"Bee," she called across the room. "Have you seen Smokescreen around? There is no file for him in the records. I need to grab his info. He has no maintenance reports, no service record..." She shook her head again, and backed up from the monitor and keyboard. She was giving this a rest even if that rest was only moments. Her processor was surely in danger of exploding from staring at green on black text. She muttered to herself, "I should have expected the kid would have no file. He showed up from nowhere."

On the other side of the large and still mostly empty, barely yet functional room, Bumblebee was busy assembling the supports to what would soon be shelving units and supply cabinets. He had already finished installing the doors leading to a couple of passageways leading further into the new base. He got up from where he had been working close to the floor and came over to join her at the monitor.

"Smoky's out with the wreckers. They went out to look over a couple of the new construction builds. I could comm him. Oh, and Knockout is with them too."

"The file can wait," Acree said, backing away further to sit on a nearby bench. "No reason to interrupt the construction. Wait... what?"

She jumped right back up from the wall mounted bench she had just sat down on. "Knockout left the base?"

'Bee sat down himself and pulled her down next to him by the hand. "Arcee, he's part of our team now. He's got to be allowed to contribute."

"It's just weird is all. Not to mention completely unexpected. We've had countless run ins with Knockout over the years, and he never once showed any indication of wanting to join the Autobots. He wanted us dead as much as the rest of them did, or so it looked."

"Why not him? is that idea really any stranger than imagine it having been any of the others? I think we can all see how he's trying still so awkwardly to belong with us, just looking for a place here. I can only imagine how it must feel to switch sides like that. We see an enemy among us, yeah. But he was taught to hate us too. I think he took a huge leap of faith in this. He's barely talking to any of us yet, but one day sure he'll tell us why."

"I just don't trust him, as far as I could throw him. He could have killed any of us more than once."

"I don't think anyone trusts him. At least not yet. That will take a while. He's gotta earn that from us. So let him earn it."

"I can't dare hope this war is actually over. Nice as it would be to sit back and enjoy the thought of that, I just can't. We've all been fighting just too long. Now we are supposed to protect a 'con defector?"

'Bee shrugged and grinned with his usual optimism. "It seems that's the plan."

"Thanks for making sense," Arcee grinned back herself, before looking serious again, and forcing herself to stand up and turn toward the dreaded workstation. "Well back to my fraggin' pile of information updates. In years of shooting and running for my life, I forgot just how boring is to be just some paperwork flunky."

"Want to do some light indoor construction for a while instead? I never actually minded a little paperwork."

She was considering his offer to switch tasks with her, when the comm unit on the wall by the workstation went off.

'Bee, Arcee... send the ground-bridge to our location... now." Smokescreen's voice on the other end sounded not quite right. The crew that had gone out had not been expected to call for a bridge back nearly this soon. Arcee immediately swallowed the dread that was creeping through her circuits. She ran for the control panels, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the comm.

"What happened out there?"

"It's knockout..."

Arcee felt the fluids in her body begin to boil. She looked toward the weapons hold, seriously debating heavily arming herself, before opening the bridge.

"What did that dirty heap of scrap do?" That was uncalled for and she knew it. But she was strangely on edge and she didn't like it.

A reply came back at once, over background noise and general chaos. "He didn't. We have an emergency. He's sustained damage. This is bad. Real bad."

She dropped all thought of arming herself, and hurried for the bridge controls. But Bumblebee was closer and had seen reason faster. He was on it already, yanking up on the lever, and calling up a swirling vortex at the front of the room.

It was only seconds before Bulkhead and Wheeljack ran through the bridge with Knockout. Clearly he should ideally not yet have been moved at all, let alone picked up and carried through the ground-bridge, but then life never did like to wait for ideal conditions. Arcee uttered some of the strongest language she had picked up back on Earth.

Smokescreen he called it bad, but that was far beyond an understatement. The fallen bot looked at first like a pile of drenched red scrap metal. His body armor had been ripped open badly in too many places to count quickly, and in a few it had been torn away entirely in large jagged pieces, right down to the framework. One leg had been all but completely crushed, and the other one hung sickeningly by only a handful of connecting wires. Spilled energon, and dirty coolant fluid, covered the nearly destroyed body, both of the wreckers, and the floor, leaving a trail from the ground-bridge. The liquid substances were still spilling and running everywhere.

"Medbay, now." Arcee shouted louder than she wanted to, but the two were already on it, and making for the door to the next room.

Bumblebee was at the comm in seconds, already giving commands to the system, via the keyboard. "I'm calling back to Nevada, Earth. We need to call Ratchet in on this one. He can space-bridge back here in minutes."

"Nobody panic, nobody panic," Acree mumbled quickly, as she and Bulkhead hurriedly grabbed any supplies that might be of any use in the least, and started to do quick field repairs. She managed to hook up monitors too, and nearly wished she hadn't looked at the read outs. Every vital function was so low. As it was, he was actually slightly awake, though plainly not exactly aware. Red optics stared in front of him, wide open, falling into focus for a fraction of a second, only to lose it again, and dim. His vocalizer was now in a constant glitch, and he was making entirely nonsensical noise.

"He tried to save us... saw it before we did... said 'go, run for cover.' Was too late..." Smokescreen spoke from the edge of the room. Arcee spared a quick look in his direction. The kid was visibly shaken, and looked about to fall to the floor. Wheeljack grabbed him gently from behind and led him away.

"Come on, Kid. Let's find somewhere you can sit down before you fall down. You held up long enough to find help. That's what most matters. Even the wreckers would have nearly lost it the first time we found a mess like that."

'Bee hurried in at the same moment. "Ratchet is going to bridge right over. I knew he would. In the meantime, maybe I can help."

Arcee replied quickly, without looking up. "We still can't get the fluid loss stopped. At this rate, he'll offline in minutes. While you're on that side, please try and deactivate the pain receptors. He's completely in shock, and near full on shut down. Won't feel pain yet. Once even slightly more stable though all bets are off."

"Working on it."

Ratchet rushed in as soon as he left the bridge. He must have been at least a little shocked and shaken by the degree of damage, but as was so typical, none of that showed. He had afterall once been a field medic in the heat of the worst of the battles for Cybertron. Such damage was unheard of in the base, but certainly not quite the worst of it he had ever come upon.

"Good job on patch ups. Because of that effort, I believe we might have a chance. Nobody run for the door just yet. I need all the help I can get..." He was already giving directions to his still slightly shaking crew mates, before any of the three remaining could bolt for the door.

"We still have no real idea what happened," Arcee said absently, suddenly somehow saddened and regretting her past comments while doing her filing work. "So far it looks like something happened at a building site..."

"Not the time to worry about that. Work out what happened later." Ratchet dismissed absently waving an arm in her face. "'Bee, hold his right leg straight and keep it steady. Try not to bend any of the wires. I need to find the main fuel line, stop the energon bleeding, and then I can temporarily weld it to stabilize it for the moment. Bad as it looks, it's not the worst of it. Bulkhead, I need rolls of wiring and a welder, at this exact second. Go! Hmm... I don't like that internal scraping sound at all. Could be nothing, could turn into something serious. Every one of you pay attention to that sound. Say something if you even think it might be getting louder."

A terrible shriek of something between shock, and terror caught Arcee's attention at once, as she stood waiting to run at any second to follow an order herself. She found herself staring into Knockout's wide open optics, now in focus and looking right at her, as he snapped into his awareness at the worst time possible. One of his hands, the one closest and mostly having escaped any great damage grabbed hers unexpectedly and a little too roughly. Arcee forced down a gasp of surprise and fright. She collected herself quickly. He hadn't meant to grab her like that, and probably had not meant to nearly hurt her. He had only meant to hold onto... someone.

"Okay, okay." she said slowly, quietly and with some uncertainty, as he just kept screaming.

"What are we screaming for, my friend?" Ratchet spoke slow, somehow impossibly calm, but firm and serious all at once. Clearly he had seen such things so many times it barely shook him anymore. He handed off the welding tool to the closest waiting hand, and reached behind him for a new device, without breaking the eye contact he had finally made. "You were brought back the base medbay. We've got this under control. Watch my light for a second, please."

"Good job," he said after a few seconds of struggling to make a panicking patent follow direction, and finally succeeding, "Yes, keep holding onto Arcee. Very good. just get your bearings for a moment. 'Bee, keep your hands right where they are. You aren't hurting him. He's just disoriented and panicking a bit."

The helpless awful screaming finally stopped. For many long minutes, Knockout just lay where he was, not moving and perfectly silent now. The expression frozen on his face, still spattered with fluids and mess, was entirely telling. He had never been among the worrier class, never been any great asset in the height of a battle. He could very well be downright dangerous in the right circumstance, but all the same he had always been the quickest to run away. This was a medical officer. He had only put those in such states back together, and never gotten used to being anywhere close to this condition himself. None of the others could say they had ever seen a teammate quite so terrified. He stared with wide frightened optics at no one in particular.

"Not off-lining... not off-lining..." he mumbled, mostly coherent, quiet, confused and shaking. "Not ready... can't be over yet..."

"Shh, of course you aren't off-lining," Arcee said slowly, calmly. She only hoped she hadn't lied. He still held onto one of her hands, clearly still not willing to let go of it. Ratchet had grabbed his welder again and managed to make the repair on the badly leaking line, while his patient was slightly distracted.

He spoke to him again. All the while part of his attention was on the monitors. "Look at my light again. Just try to follow it a bit. Right. Now, your pain receptors are shut down, but you should still have a sense of your own body. Can you feel the tops and bottoms of both feet?"

Knockout only mumbled something barely audible about only one of them and barely the other one, and looked far more terrified.

"You're still doing good. Don't be too scared if you can't feel anything yet. You're fixable." Ratchet reached behind him and retrieved a length of hollow rigid tubing. He handed one end to 'Bee, instructing him to simply hold it for a moment, and then connect it to a nearby energon feed when he said so. The other end, he carefully worked to quickly, but still carefully feed through a space the body armor of one of Knockout's lower arms, the one that wasn't still franticly holding into his teammate. The injured bot was mostly compliant in letting him, but even that caused his optics to open wider with alarm, and it was obvious that he was trying not to pull his arm away.

"I need you to keep that arm still," Ratchet held his calm tone, still never failing at that. "I need to find a main fuel line, and this is just not working. Arcee can you try placing your other hand maybe over his for a second. Just like that, thank you. 'Bee, connect your end to the machine now, quickly."

"This is just not a very good day," Knockout mumbled shakily.

Ratchet spoke to him again. "We've got a bit of work ahead of us now, to get you put back together. I'm going to force you right into power down now, and unless something goes wrong, we're just going to let you sleep for a while."

Knockout's optics opened wide again, and he begged urgently. "Please Don't. I don't want to power down." The shaking only got worse.

"It'll be easier for you, if you are powered right down," Arcee said. She looked at his optics and hoped to hold his gaze for a moment, but he was only looking around the room franticly. She hadn't lied about the main motivation for powering him down of course, but it the same time she knew how much easier it would be for Ratchet and the team trying to assist as well. Any bot with any level of basic field training could tell a difficult patient within seconds. She knew that Knockout would be more than a little difficult. She knew that no one was holding it against him. But he was far too terrified, showing unexpected signs of strange trust issues, and more than likely felt trapped and cornered, because he could barely move.

"Please, please…. Don't make me, don't make me…" Knockout was on the verge of starting to scream again in panic.

All four of the team in the room, exchanged quick concerned glances. No one said a thing about it out loud, but all of them had the same kind of sinking feeling. Ratchet was the first to recover from the second of speechless dread. Turning back to work a few controls behind him he spoke again, with surprising understanding. "We'll try to do this without a power down. If at any point though, you're feeling too panicked, or you just don't want to do it anymore, let me know right away. I don't like these readings in the least. If we can't get it all to even out soon, down you go. We'll have no choice."

Another slight nod in response. The oddly scared patient had calmed a fair bit again- or likely was just well beyond emotionally spent. His optics did widen again though somewhat and the look of panic began to creep back in as he demanded, "Where are the others? Did the rest make it back?"

Arcee slowly nodded. "Bulk is here helping. The other two are here in the base somewhere. No one else was even hurt."

"I guess I've busted myself up pretty bad?" Knockout said. His voice was so quiet, but was clearly he was doing a better job of holding himself together now, at least for the moment. He stared at Arcee, obviously trusting her to give an honest answer. Finally realizing he was holding onto her quite hard, he let her go.

"I think you've done so much more than just scuffed up your finish this time." She forced a slight laugh, forcing herself to make light of it. Halfheartedly, he tried to look at her with his usual smirking expression. It faded again quickly. Even with his pain receptors deactivated, a good deal of discomfort was unavoidable. Between that and the obvious tendency towards panic, he was alternating quickly and often, between near rigid with fright, and barely able to force himself to not move.

Ratchet, acting quickly, but as carefully as possible, worked to straighten and assess the crushed left leg. Arcee nearly let her composure slip entirely when she caught a good glimpse of the full extent of the damage, while trying to make sure Knockout didn't notice it himself. All that was left of the body armor was a mess of crushed, busted up, and bent twisted metal. But the supporting framework underneath had broken into at least five pieces, and half of those was facing backwards. Energon, combined with every other needed vital fluid poured from too many places, as soon as anything was moved even slightly. It was seconds before it once again covered the floor and most of the team. The medic wondered aloud, but at barely above a whispered mutter, if it might worth rebuilding, or best to replace whole limb with a newly constructed replacement. A shattered piece of the body armor tore away from the frame, and hit the floor with a sickening bang. Two separate monitors began to beep and buzz in alarm at once. Arcee placed her hands lightly on Knockout's chest panel.

"Alright, alright. Hold still. We've got this," she spoke slowly. Knockout's optics had lost all focus, and dimmed again. He appeared to stare off into space without seeing anything. He had gone from the constant trembling to an almost violent shaking.

"Are you sure you don't want to be powered down through most of this?" she asked calmly, when he had managed somehow to gather his senses again. She could clearly see a stream of thin liquid still seeping from somewhere beneath his faceplate.

He looked like he was considering for a brief second, before he finally shook his head slowly. "I... I'll be... I'll be alright. Could you... just keep talking to me?"

Arcee nodded. She reached behind her for a clean white cloth from the top of a pile of them in a cupboard. Gently she brushed a corner of it against the damaged faceplate, wiping away any leaking fluid, and trying to work out where it was still coming from. She searched her processor for something, anything, to talk to him about. Most of her stories that she might tell, related to the long endless war. But he had spent his own life on the opposite side of that war. She could hardly relay any great stories from her own side of it. Now was not a time for that to be acceptable.

Searching her memories again, she gave a tiny laugh. "I could tell you about a day, when we first landed back on Earth. Not one of us knew very much about what anything was, or what it did. All we had was our information data base, and the power of reasoning skills. It was all trail or error really, to figure anything out and usually the hard way. So me and Bulkhead found ourselves out scouting some rocky terrain outside Jasper Nevada, and both of us nervous of anything that moved out there. Well of course leave it to that big clumsy brute to walk face first into a tree, and face to face with a hornets nest, high up in the branches. Hornets obviously can't sting metal, and we should have keep right on going. But he was instantly reminded somehow of scraplets. That was the day I learned just how well he can scream like girl. One wrong step backwards and down he goes, right over the cliff, and bouncing down to the bottom, out near the highway. Caused a rock slide. We got out of there before anyone saw us, and broke our cover. But good old secondary highway 48 was closed for a day and a half."

Arcee was not entirely sure that Bulkhead would not let her have it later for relying that tale, but it did make Knockout grin slightly. She found the crack in the side of the faceplate. It was hardly a serious injury compared to the rest, but was hardly minor either. Surely at least one main fluid line underneath had been cut, and she could clearly see a couple of bare, broken wires. She tried hard to think of another story to tell. Silly stories seemed to be helpful, and surely there were so many more for her to tell. But her processor had drawn a blank.

"Maybe 'Bee and Smoky will go racing with you one day," she said, determined to keep speaking while Ratchet tried hard to repair a terribe, still badly leaking gash across the left side panel. Welding was barely holding and the shininess of the framework was showing under the tear, as soon as any liquid was wiped away. "We need to look for a good long stretch of road, nice for the tires of your vehicle modes. Show Cybertron the human art of high speed street racing."

"That noise," Bumblebee said, interrupting her as she was about to keep speaking. "It sounds worse."

Ratchet dropped what he was doing that second, and tipped his head a bit to listen closely. The worsening noise had been a subtle thing initially. But suddenly and quickly, it went from bad to far worse. It was now a steady gasping rattling sound with undertones of grinding metal noises.

"Sounds like the intake system is failing. I had hoped it was minor damage and would self-repair, but now it sounds like clearly something has been jarred loose in there. Someone grab me that light again." he spoke quickly, and then instantly shifted his tone slightly. "Sorry, my friend. I've got to get that front panel open quickly, while it's still a quite dented out of shape. Might be a bit of a rough job."

Knockout nodded only slightly. He looked entirely defeated by that point. He could only have known well himself what would happen from there. He was a medic too after all.

"Forced power down will be inevitable now," he said quietly.

Ratchet had at first tried to simply pull the panel open, but that hadn't worked any better than he thought it would have. No matter how hard he pulled, the effort was met only with the sound of it bending up worse from the strain on the metal body panel. Quickly he reached for a small prying tool and with a quick look of apology, tried to jam it as gently as possible between the edge of the panel and the rest of the front plating.

"Slow, gentle intakes for a moment. Nice and slowly, as best you can do."

"Hurts... hurts..." Knockout mumbled. He looked so scared again.

"It will. I'm sorry. Once more, slowly, nice and gently. Good job. We've got it open. Sorry I know this is pretty horrible." Ratchet reached behind him. "Pass me the light."

He shined his light into the open front maintenance panel, and took several moments to make his assessment. Finally he shook his head slightly, and mumbled something too quiet for anyone to make it out. He looked again, and reached for a pair of pilers, which he used to carefully remove a shard of busted metal, with a steady hand. Another smaller piece and another shake of his head. More muttering, and finally a positive nod, as he removed a few more bits, just as carefully as ever.

"What were those pieces of metal?" Arcee asked, almost fearing the answer.

"A little of the casing, and part of the circulation fan's spinner. There's more in there, underneath the whole unit, but it's not so simple to get to."

"So what happens now?"

"Removal of the secondary panel, disassembly of the fans... routers... bearings... I know the intake is breaking apart..." Knockout spoke slowly, quietly and clearly horrified. He had grasped the reality of the situation already himself.

"Gotta do full power down for this my friend," Ratchet said, already reaching for some new piece of equipment. "We tried our best."

"Yeah," Knockout nodded just slightly. He was having so much trouble by now just keeping his intake system working well enough to circulate any air at all. There was no denying he looked exhausted, and ready to give in anyway. He had grabbed Acree's hand again and was holding on tightly as before, but she didn't stop him. "We tried."

"Hey the power down can only do you good anyways," Arcee said, forcing a smile across her faceplate. She squeezed back for a second. "How long since you've gotten in a good long recharge."

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

When Arcee and Bulkhead shakily made their way back into the common room a short while later, having left 'Bee to assist Ratchet, they found Smokescreen and Wheeljack sitting around casually on a couple of the benches, conversing quietly. Smokescreen thankfully looked better. He looked up fast as the two wandered in, and came to sit down.

"How is Knockout? Tell me he's not going to offline on us."

"He's still in very bad shape." Arcee leaned back on the bench, letting her processor finally catch up to her body. "He should have offlined from energon loss that bad, but he didn't. Legs are nearly destroyed. Air intake is scrap. Ratchet will likely find more internal system damage once he's done with that intake system."

She stopped for a moment, to steady her hands, which had started to shake again as she spoke, and then continued on. "He didn't want to power down. He's terrified and I'm not sure why. Strange. I've never managed to end up scrapped nearly that bad myself, thank Primus for that. But last time I did get myself injured enough to need hauling back to base disabled, I was grateful to be powered down and quickly. That look in his optics though… honestly it was awful. Like he really thought he'd never been powered back up again.

Bulkhead nodded silently, agreeing with her.

"Hey sorry for that little flip out of mine," Smokescreen mumbled, obviously disappointed with himself. He shrugged and leaned forward in his seat. "You train for this kind of thing, ya know, just in case. And you think, yeah great, good to know, got it. Most of the time I can think on my feet, but this time I guess I just lost it. I guess when I know something is going to get bad and then worse, it's all good. Just keep doing it all one step at a time, and let it get even worse, because we all know it will anyways. But when things turn from fine to disaster out of nowhere..."

He stopped dead in mid-sentence, and just stared for several seconds. Finally, he spoke again, his tone more serious than before. "I don't suppose anyone's had time yet to explain what actually happened in the first place.

Arcee shook her head. "For a while I was assuming construction site collapse. But then I can only assume that would be too straightforward. No, for us, it's never just a matter of good old bad luck."

"You'd be right about the building falling down," Bulkhead said grimly "It went crashing down, right after it was bombed from the air."

"Autobots under attack again?" Arcee jumped to her feet and began to pace slightly. Already strangely on edge, this news only made it infinitely worse. "This has got to be a special delivery curtesy of..."

"'Cons?" Smokescreen said. "Just one of them. Acting alone, or at least it seems so. If he had back up anywhere, no one saw them. Small flyer. Very fast jetmode. Came from the west, circled once overhead, attacked from above with no warning and took right off without a word."

"White, blue and red paint job," Bulkhead said, thinking. "Color's all wrong. Doesn't look like any 'con I know. But that's gotta be..."

"Starscream," Arcee growled. She stopped her pacing and stood with a mix of dread and rage across her faceplate. "He's obviously decided to change his color-scheme. I knew that frag pile would resurface sooner or later. He's never going to just give up this war and fly away politely."

"What did we think he'd do with his life now that the war should be over?" Bulkhead mumbled. "Join the construction crew and put his flying skills to use transporting materials?"

"I should have crushed that spoiled, skinny little piece of work when I had a chance at him," he went on, and growing angry. He slammed his large fists together with a great thud to make his point. "Show him how the wreckers get things done!"

They all had a slight laugh when Wheeljack mumbled something about a few spare grenades he still had just laying around.

"It's hard to say anything for sure, when it comes to Starscream," Arcee said, musing aloud. "He's always been unpredictable. We know he'll rebuild the 'con troops eventually. This won't just go away. But I can only assume this incident today was just him alone, looking for revenge on Knockout for betraying him."

"Then we need to protect him for the time being." Smokescreen explained with determination. "He tried to protect us. Saw that flyer coming right toward us and tried to get all four of us to safety before the whole structure could blow. He was behind us, last one to the edge of the wall. It's no secret that among the 'cons he was the first to dodge a blow, and yell retreat, but this time he just couldn't retreat in time. He could have knocked any of us to the ground trying to save himself, but he didn't. We all tried to escape together. The three of us all made it in time to see the whole thing explode and fall around us, and when we looked back over the cloud of dust, Knockout wasn't behind us."

Arcee nodded her head slowly, taking it all in. "He wanted to know, when he woke up for a while, if everyone had made it out of there safely. Just like any one of us would have done."

She sat for a minute or two, confused and shaking her head. letting so many reactions, delayed by a need for urgent focus, catch up to her. "I never could quite trust him. Still can't fully. But this defecting to join the 'winning team,' I questioned it as much as any of us did. What I saw today, this may not just be about placing himself among winners for some selfish reason. No wonder he's so terrified and shaken up so bad. Nearly blown away by a former ally. He did say 'Scream might have fired him out the airlock, but I thought he was being dramatic. Anyway this is a new low, even for that scrap pile. He always did like to play dirty but..."

"Dirty got him so far up through the ranks," Bulk' grumbled, still clenching fists. "I still say I shoulda crushed him."

 **One more quick note/ okay so as I started writing, I realized just how weird it actually is writing anything, when your characters are giant living robotic machines. How does one even put together anything involving Cybertronian medical care? Wow, a bit like a mix of medical drama and a visit to my mechanic to discuss a possible car accident write-off? I've read it written quite a bit, but never tired it before myself. If anything is outright wrong about the anatomy of a Transformer, or anything else for that matter, sorry about that.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes/ Wow, thanks for the reviews. I'm always grateful for them, and I'm glad to see it seems like someone likes and is reading this. Thanks for the advice so far. Its good food for thought. I had hoped to have this chapter up a couple of days ago. Clearly I'm running late. Been busy. Gotta love life stopping you from writing, lol. This one is a bit longer, or at least I think it is. That should make up for my lateness. As always, please, read review, etc, etc….**

Bumblebee knew full well as he drove fast across the flat lands, that he was racing right into a dangerous situation. He knew he should question his judgement. He knew he should have asked himself, before he even left home base, exactly what it was he was thinking. But he hadn't questioned himself and he wasn't about to. He wandered, as he left the road, and let his tires bounce along on less than stable, barely suitable terrain, if perhaps some back up might have been wise. The thought was dismissed as fast as it came. He tilted his side mirror up slightly and then from side to side a little, trying to get a look around and behind him, while he traveled in vehicle mode. No one had followed him.

He double checked the set of co-ordinates he had been supplied with, and kept right on driving, even as the path grew more impassable. For a split second his tires lost all traction, and he slid across a slick metal surface that covered at least half a mile. He braked in time to miss the sheer face of a great cliff before him Unable to travel further in vehicle form, the Autobot transformed back to bot-mode, and walked fast around to the side of the cliff. He looked overhead at the sound of a flying vehicle in a fast approach and, watched a small jet-mode as it circled twice, flipped in midair, and circled again. The flyer was clearly showing off, while at the same time probably surveying for traps.

"Starscream," Bumblebee yelled at the sky, as the small jet came lower. He recognized

him at once, even with a new bright paintjob. "Get down here and talk face to face." He had his weapons at the ready, but still inactive. He was not looking for a firefight, but was more than ready to shoot if things went bad. The 'con flipped his alt-mode over again, transformed in the air a short way from the ground, and landed gracefully on his feet. He stared the 'bot down for almost too long, a look of clear disgust and hate across his faceplates.

"It's Lord Starscream now!" he finally hollowed, pacing toward the black and yellow 'bot.

"We don't need titles," Bumblebee answered calmly. He held his hands casually at his sides, making his lack of threatening intent perfectly clear. "I thank you for answering my call to come out here and meet with me. Even if the co-ordinates you were good enough to supply led me somewhere so impassible."

He glanced around at the surrounding cliffs and the ground that was either too slick or littered with huge steel and copper bricks.

'Scream only laughed and then frowned at him in mockery. "Well I suppose such a trip would be somewhat of a problem for a ground based vehicle. Shall I apologize for my indesgesion?"

His contempt for anyone that favored a ground based mode had never been a secret. His comment went ignored. His dislike or being ignored was just as well known, and he went right on talking, determined to be heard. To get a reaction.

"So I suppose then that of all that pathetic bunch, you are the leader of the Autobots now. I would only guess the 'bots settled that matter by democratic vote. Your bunch always did love that fair and democratic nonsense. Now I tend to prefer a good old dictatorship myself. My troops will never doubt who their great Lord is and I cannot simply be voted out…"

"We have no leader," 'Bee interrupted his rambling on. "We are a family. We have no need for one sworn leader. We all have our strengths. Maybe if you tried it a little differently on your side, you could put a stop to the constant infighting your ranks are known far."

Starscream stared Bumblebee down again, for at a minute at least. He gave a silent snarl once, and let his eyes narrow in rage. But he got no real reaction. Finally, he kicked at a small bit of metal on the ground, muttering quietly, "stupid Autobot."

"They'll never follow you, you know," Bumblebee said after the second it took to hide his disbelief at the ridiculous outburst. "They will for a while. But it'll all fall apart. You have no end goal but to be in command. Do you know even what you are leading them too? You are not a leader 'Scream. It looks to me, like you want the title for the sake of the title, and that can never last long."

"What is it that you want with me, Autobot? A lot of nerve you've got, calling me up on a public comms channel."

"This war we're all fighting; it's been centuries now. So long that younglings were born, grew up and have never known peace in their whole lives. It's destroyed an entire planet and we only took it to the stars to keep right on fighting. We were given a second chance, Starscream. Another shot at building good lives on our own world. New lives could grow up in peace, could have ambitions, and amount to something wonderful. Those are the new lives that the last of the Primes gave himself up for. This war should have been over. I say let's end it today."

"I knew that you finally getting your voice back, would end badly for me," Starscream bickered, scowling again. "Now you don't seem to ever know how to shut up."

"I Mean it 'Scream." Bumblebee pressed on with determination, looking the unpredictable 'con straight in the optics. "You and I could let it end here and now, for both of our factions. An agreed and sworn ceasefire. No more innocent neutrals, who have never chosen a side or taken part, need to die. You could have a future yourself…"

"No!"

"Listen. You spent centuries in some crazy conquest to become Lord of the Decepticons. You've made it. Your end goal filled. Now why not lead your people to peace. Be the great leader that chose a better way. You could be remembered forever. Your name would live on in the records of Cybertron."

"I'll be remembered anyway, Autobot. They fear me. Fear makes history remember."

"They laugh and mock you."

"I will never sign some peace treaty with a worthless Autobot! You pile of scrap metal."

"Think about this…"

Starscream advanced forward a couple more paces. His blasters were ready to fire at any point. 'Bee felt his slight, but ever present sense of fear, well up through his body and he made ready to shoot back if needed. Still though his mind was made up. He would not shoot first.

He stepped back, stumbling over metal chunks, and sliding on the slick ground. He stopped himself fast and looked up at his opponent from his new position half sprawled on his back on the ground. He cursed his mistake of letting his guard down even slightly. Starscream was clearly far more unhinged than usual, and Bubmlebee knew he might well do anything by this point.

"I could organize my team," he said. He was talking fast but his tone was entirely serious. "We could well find and storm your camp, and place you under arrest as a war criminal. We know it was you that bombed that construction zone due south of here. The perfect match to your new paintjob proves it. That site was at the edge of neutral territory. It was occupied only by Autobots at the time, yes. But those 'Bots were serving at the moment in time simply as builders. An unprovoked attack was completely uncalled for."

He got himself to his feet again, and Starscream went on scowling. The 'Con eventually turned his expression to a fearsome grin. He placed his hands together and clicked his fingers against each other menacingly.

"Unprovoked attack?" He snarled. "Oh please, you ridiculous insect. I was simply trying to rescue a Decepticon officer, whom you seem to have taken prisoner."

"Rescue him? You think for a second I'd buy that story? You tried to blow him up, along with half my team. Knockout made his choice. He's hardly a prisoner, and you surely know it. Hence the attack of vengeance."

Starscream had no space to take off flying right from there, but he rudely turned his back and stomped off a ways muttering. Finally, he transformed and flew fast back up the sky.

"He'll only betray you, you know," he yelled from the air, his voice coming from somewhere inside the fighter jet. He circled a few times, taunting." What exactly do you plan to do with him anyway, make him a medic for your side? You'll never keep control of that one. He's only ever been insubordinate."

scene break/scene break/scene break/scene break/scene break/scene break

Knockout woke up slowly, and with a strange amount of trouble orienting himself. He wondered at first when exactly he had dropped into recharge. He didn't remember doing so. He closed his optics and instantly reopened them again, trying to make his vision focus. Slowly images began to make sense. He could see bright lights overhead, and high white shelving to one side. There was a cabinet and a couple of rolling carts… the sliding door across the room, just visible in the corner of his vision, seemed to be closed. He understood that he was in a medbay of some sort. It reminded him a little of one he had worked in for decades, and for a second the thought of that caused a wave of strangely mixed emotions.

No, it was not the same one he remembered at all. This one was small. A lot smaller than the huge workspace he had once occupied. He blinked again, and remembered he had seen this one before, more than once. The Autobots had shown him around it at some great length. Various members of the small team, strongly hinted that he would be inheriting this work space sooner than later. The Autobots? He remembered that he was one of them now, or at least trying hard to be. The idea of it seemed as strange and shocking and somehow still amazing, as it did so many other times he had woken up to remember that.

One of the 'bots sat lightly recharging on a too narrow bench near the door. He saw him when he turned his head to look around a bit more. The blue and yellow one. The overconfident rookie that was so well known for acting first and considering the fallout later. The kid had been the first of them to actually try to be nice to him, to actually seem to believe his intentions were true. Knockout remembered that they had very recently shared a somewhat awkward chuckle about some mishaps involving the kid's phase shifter. Could it still be called a mishap, he wondered if clearly it had been deliberate? They had been enemies then. He considered calling to the kid, but decided not to bother. Instead he stayed still and set about trying to assess his own situation and make some initial self-diagnosis.

There was so much, and it all just hurt everywhere, and so badly that he could not think straight about it. He tried to focus a bit, to determine where the greatest amount of terrible burning and grinding pain was coming from and he simply couldn't tell. One thing seemed to hurt as much as the next. He had never considered himself strong, or built for survival. Mostly he got by on pure dumb luck. He was certain that many others on Cyberton, likely one either side of the war, would have hidden such pain all too well, but he felt like screaming. Behind him he heard the steady beeps and buzzing pulses of a couple of monitors connected to his body. At least four lines had been attached to his main coolant and energon systems.

Knockout had been barely conscious the last time he had been awake. Everything had been a mess of pain and terror, of confusion and wondering if he was truly awake at all. He could just vaguely recall trying to grab hold of one of his teammates, while screaming horribly, and he didn't know now which of them it had actually been. There were bits and pieces involving barely feeling his left foot and begging to please avoid a power down. Mostly he just remembered looking around in an almost detached sense of amazement at seemingly endless pools of lightly glowing blue energon that seemed to be leaking onto the floor from somewhere, of thinking he should care about the sheer amount of it and somehow not cluing in.

He remembered that for a while Arcee had been talking to him. Something ridiculous, about an insect nest and a fall over a cliff while someone yelled like a girl. He recalled that he had thought it slightly funny. There was a bit about racing too. The thought that he might actually be able to race again, to use his vehicle mode had made him calmer. He knew than that it must have been her who he had grabbed hold of and likely far too roughly in panic. At some point he could just barely recall, how sure he was that he had off-lined entirely, and wondering if he was supposed to be seeing a light."Hey. You awake? Can you hear me?" the kid on the bench was talking to him. He snapped out of his still confused recollections and looked at him slowly. He tried to move a bit, to find a more comfortable position, and to made eye contact with the kid. The sudden stabbing agony across his side panel, made him groan out loud and reconsider moving again.

"uhh… good morning… I think." The kid said, speaking with some obvious uncertainty. "Hey don't move. We've been taking turns sitting in here in case a monitor or something were to go off. The only way Ratchet would finally agree to go and recharge is if he knew he would not have a critical patent left alone for long. As it is, Bulkhead nearly needed to tie him up so he would sleep a bit and realize he had done all he could.

"How long… have I been asleep?"

The kid shrugged slightly and thought about it. "Maybe a day and a half. How do you feel? I can only imagine, like scrap."

"Pretty much. Apologies, which one are you?" Knockout had been trying but could not place that one's name, though he knew he should have remembered it. Against his better judgment he tried to move again, to do a better job of looking at the 'bot while talking with him. Again, moving only made his pain so much worse.

"Smokescreen," the kid supplied quickly. He seemed to be pressing a few buttons on a panel by the door, before he turned around again and went on speaking.

"I just sent an alert to Ratchet. He made me promise to comm and wake him up, if you woke up. He says he couldn't just keep your pain receptors off for too long, so he decided to risk reactivating the network… it seems that's the safer bet, even though…"

"He's right," Knockout said. He felt slightly bad for the young rookie. Obviously the kid did not do well at all, around anyone sick or injured.

"Right," Smokescreen rambled a bit. "You would know that. I… forget you were the medic for the other side… Hey, Ratchet said last night that you were pretty well scrapped, but once he started working on repairs… not quite as bad as it looked. I… I mean, still bad. He said best to be honest about that. but not so…"

A loud crashing bang nearby and somewhere out of sight, made Knockout look around the very little he could, searching for the source of the noise. For some reason he didn't quite understand, the sudden noise made him nervous. Another much louder crash followed in in seconds. By now he was trying to force back the growing wave of anxiety that was rising up though his body, while trying at the same time to hide his great unease. He didn't know why he was hiding it, any more than he knew why he was uneasy in the first place.

The kid didn't seem all too concerned about the crashing, and surely he would have known a threat if one truly existed… wouldn't he? As it was, Smokescreen was only standing by the door, which he must have just slid partly open, looking out into the next room and shaking his head. There was yet another bang, and then a hard metallic thud, which sounded like it came from the other side of the wall. No one seemed worried about it, in fact it should perhaps have even been funny, but Knockout could not stop his anxiety.

"Wh… what was that…" he tried to ask, scared by just how shaky he sounded even to himself and how he could not control that.

Smokescreen turned to face him. He was still shaking his head. "I think someone knocked over the… Hey, you okay? It was just…"

"Bulkhead!" Ratchet's voice demanded from outside the room. "Would you please be careful and tone down the noise! Do I need to remind you that I still have a seriously injured, resting patient!"

"…Er… Sorry."

"You had better be, you big clumsy…"

Knockout listened, to the conversation outside, hearing more and more though a growing fog of static in his processor.

"Would just go sit down, before… knock over…" He was not even making out every word by that point. The static fog grew worse and his vision faded to dull muted colors as the room began to slowly spin.

"That kind of noise… last thing we…" The old red and white Autobot medic was in the room by then, muttering about something and looking far too angry. He stood in one place shaking his head, before Knockout's vision fell entirely into swirling colors.

"Knockout! Come on. Look at me for a moment. Do you hear me?"

That got his attention. The room stopped spinning and he looked back at the medic. Clearly from his tone, he had been speaking for a while, entirely unheard.

"Ratchet," Knockout managed to mumble slowly. "Please don't hurt Bulkhead. He didn't mean to…"

"What?" The old medic was clearly confused. He looked at him for a long moment and spoke calmly. "I'm not going to hurt Bulkhead. I don't want to hurt anyone. He knocked over a shelf… and a worktable… and then pretty much himself tripping over the whole mess. It's far too much noise. He needs to watch his step and be more careful. But I'm not about to harm him for it."

"Right… of course you wouldn't…" Knockout mumbled quietly, confused and embarrassed by his misdirected accusation. Of course Ratchet would never hurt anyone.

At the edge of his field of vision, Knockout saw Arcee quickly come into the room. She talked for a moment with Smokescreen in low tones near the door. Something about a missing teammate, and a lost tracking signal. The yellow one, Bumblebee. He had taken off some time earlier and not left the slightest word. She said he had last appeared on the tracking board heading due southeast, before the tracker dropped.

"Southeast?" Smokescreen mumbled slowly, appearing to think hard. "What the scrap… There is nothing out that way. He'd end eventually dead-end at the cliffs…."

Ratchet, standing nearby and obviously trying to listen while watching a monitor, and searching through a drawer all at once appeared conflicted for a moment, torn between duty to his missing teammate and his patient.

"Wheeljack is heading out to search for 'Bee," Arcee was saying. "Smokescreen, go with him if you want. I'll stay here and help if Ratchet needs me."

Knockout may have been in a great deal of pain and emotional destress, but still the look of relief on the kid's face, at a reason to go running out of there fast, was almost enough to make him laugh slightly. He must have been given some good strong pain killers at some point without even noticing, because he was beginning to feel at least considerably better. He felt the sense of panic and confusion fading out too, and had to assume it was because the crashing noises outside had stopped.

For a while he only stayed still, which his optics shut, and allowed himself to be worked on and checked over, scanned and rescanned, because really he knew he had little choice in it. He could have fussed and complained, but so far he had never seen anybody successfully up a fight against the old 'bot medic anyway. He listened while Ratchet explained the damages as he rechecked everything. The intake and half the internal systems had been uttered trashes. He nodded slightly. If anything he had figured as much. His body had been scraped up and torn open to the frame, and bent dented and left leaking from too many broken lines. He confirmed a sense of that too. He opened his optics again, as he became aware of Arcee, working gently to clean him up a bit. He realized with some great embarrassment that his body was still quite fully covered in a dull mess of dried energon that must have once been literally everywhere.

"I can't use any strong cleaning solvent, because of too many new repairs," she said, still working away. "But warm soapy water, should do some good."

"My left leg," Knockout mumbled slowly, finally daring to face the questions he had been putting off. "I know that's pretty bad."

He saw Ratchet nod, as the old medic moved to work with his lower body. "It was basically crushed, probably under a great deal of weight. Apparently even the wreckers had trouble moving a steel beam to finally move you. It sounds like you were wedged in good between the beam and the newly laid floor."

"I don't remember any of that…"

"Probably for the best too. The left leg took the most damage. Broken into pieces, the body armor ripped to shreds… I've taken most of the armor paneling off for now. Still working on straighten it out and repairing its connection sensors. I'll put it back on soon enough. The frame is too damaged at this point anyway to hold any of the weight."

His leg had been wrapped up in long sheets of metal mesh wrappings. Beneath all that, thin rigid metal supports had been temporally welded in place against the limb to hold it all in place, and bound tightly with wires and clamps. He moved himself slightly, carefully and watched while the old medic slowly began the process of unwrapping, while saying something about clean-up and redoing it all. His leg was straighter than he had feared it would be. Indeed, it was nearly perfectly straightened. A fair bit of the armor was sure enough torn away terrible and more of it had clearly been carefully taken apart with medical tools. The way the frame had been welded, he knew it had been in at least a few pieces not long ago. But it was holding together. He looked back up again, to see Arcee visibly cringing. She had stopped moving and stood holding her cleaning rag in one hand, near his right arm.

"You might not want to look…" she cringed again, the disbelief clear in her voice. "We'll find something to talk about, okay?"

Busy still working away, Ratchet gave a slight laugh. He reached for a pair of wire cutters and in one quick move, cut through the wire the held the support together. "The medics usually end up being the ones that try watching. He probably finds it interesting, if anything. Arcee, please hand me that roll of mesh wrapping on the worktable."

"I do hope everything is alright," Knockout said after a few long moments of silence. "With Bumblebee I mean. Surely they will find him soon."

"Don't worry about that," Arcee answered. "You have enough to worry about with recovery now. The team will find him. Anyway, the best chance is still that he cut his own signal for some reason, so no one would follow him. He's good at taking care of himself… he always could hold his own…"

Her words died in the air, but Knockout saw the nervous worry on her faceplates.

 **Another note/ Hopefully no one is actually looking too OOC. I am aiming for realistic characterizations in this. Okay, I had way too much fun writing the first scene, if I'm honest. I've never really had any idea how to write Starscream and this is the first time I've actually tried… but it ended up being interesting. He's clearly insane, and always did seem about to go off at any second. The unstable, unpredictable ones are fun!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes/ Okay one more up. I wanted to get it up today and I'll actually make it too. Nice! I thought I knew where this one going when I started the chapter, and it did all that, but it also ended up quite different than I had planned. I still like. I'm actually very happy with this chapter. But it ended up honestly being a mostly pure fluff chapter, and is a TON of dialogue.**

Arcee had been alone in the common room, when Bumblebee had driven inside, in his vehicle mode, after nearly a day without showing a signal. He was obviously unhurt, but bore a heavy layer of dust from the road, and lack thereof. He had relayed that he traveled at least eight hundred miles, and at first said little else about it. He had sat down on the bench near the control board, and stared at the floor.

Arcee stared at him now, her gaze unblinking, as she tried hard to read his expression. Anger? Yes, there was some of that there. Sadness? Greif? Perhaps a little, but hidden to anyone who might not have known him as well as she did. Defeat? Complete utter defeat. Yes, that was the one she saw most. He looked so very close to being entirely defeated this time. She sat herself down on the bench near him and for a moment neither said a thing.

Finally, Arcee dared to quietly ask, "'Bee, where did you go? What happened?"

He didn't even look up at her, staring at the floor as she answered shakily, "I had hoped so much that the war was over. It should have been over. I was so sure… had so much hope this time… but there will be no ceasefire."

"What? Well we haven't started trying for one yet, not formally. Honestly I don't know. At this point anything could happen, given that recent attack." Arcee groaned a little, and raised a hand to her faceplate. "Any negotiations we try for now, would mean directly negotiating with Starscream, and I can't think of anyone who is eager for that honor. At least with Megatron, we knew what it was we were dealing with most of the time."

"'Scream won't end it," Bumblebee raided his head at least and looked up trembling slightly. "I tried to convince him… said he could finally do the right thing… have a future… be remembered as the one that finally did this… He wants to be recognized, remembered. I told him he could be…. Still no chance. He's in this for the feeling of power, and we will never get him now…"

"Wait, 'Bee… you went off to deal with Starscream, by yourself?" Arcee turned to stare him in the optics, giving a look to let him know just how serious her concern was. "Leaving no word, and bringing no backup? You could have been hurt… he might have killed you!"

"But he didn't kill me," bumblebee stared back at her, that same defeated look still overshadowing the growing defiance in his optics. "He just rambled on laughing, and kicking the ground. Yelled a few insults, acted like a human child might, and flew away. He was always unhinged, 'Cee, but this was bad. He's losing his mind and that's saying a lot."

"Maybe the troops will overthrow him," Arcee laughed a little, but she knew it was far from funny. "Who's next in line? Soundwave? Him, we could probably talk terms with. I'm not so scared of him."

She considered for a moment and then said with a shake of her head, "if he were to declare a continued war on the Autobots, at least we'd finally have an opponent who would do it quietly."

'Bee slowly let a smile show on his face that that last comment, but Arcee turned serious again quickly and put her hands on her teammate's shoulders. "I mean it though. 'Bee, you be careful. Don't do anything this ridiculously foolish again."

"I'll try not to." Bumblebee got up from the bench against the wall. "Thanks for listening, Arcee. I know that was stupid, but I just had to try. I know you know that."

She nodded and he turned to walk away. "I badly need a shower and a good recharge. I'll see you in a few hours and I'll grab a building assignment from Bulkhead."

After he had gone, Arcee sat for many long moments, just staring at the inactive monitor and the time gage underneath it. It was sometime in the early hours of what they might have called 'morning' back on Earth. She sent a comm quickly out to the two that were still searching for Bumblebee. Letting them know he was back, unharmed and had been far further than either would have thought to look. When a brief reply of 'Turning around' came back in over the monitor, she backed away from it, and made her way down the hallway toward her living quarters.

Arcee's living space, like most on Cybertron, and certainly like any inside an Autobot base installation, was purely functional for the most part. She lay flat on her recharge station for a long time, unable to power down her processor and recharge. It seems like far too long, that she lay still, needing the recharge and knowing it, feeling her body's need for some rest. But she simply couldn't. Too many thoughts and uncertainties rattled through her mind, begging her attention, forcing her to notice each one.

She sat up again, grabbed a data-pad, from the top of a stack of three of them on the simple wall mounted shelf, and lay back down to balance the thing on her knees and flip through it a while. This one was full mostly of photographs. Pictures she had saved from Earth. Miko took pictures all the time on that cellphone she never seemed to put down, and she had always been happy to share them all. There were so many taken inside the old base in Nevada. She hadn't realized she would miss the place, but she actually did.

She giggled a while over pictures of the human children, constantly posing for the camera, being silly. Each of them must have posed at some point at least once with each of the 'bots; sitting on shoulders, or photographed resting on a foot here and there. She flipped through the photo files and found a picture of herself, leaning down to fit in the frame, little Raf held upside-down by her outstretched hands. Miko had dared her. Raf had agreed to do it, laughing. Jack sat on the seat of her vehicle mode at least once, grinning. Once he was sitting backwards, and faking confusion over how to correctly ride a motorcycle. Ratchet looked just plain cranky as ever in the few he had been caught in, but there was one that showed the hint of a grin. Clearly he'd tried to hide that. He always did., lest anyone catch on that he could actually smile or laugh. Miko had caught him once, laughing at a joke he denied laughing at, and of course there she had been, camera phone in hand.

Arcee flipped again to the next image, and for a moment she just lay reclined on the recharge station speechless. She stared at a clear photo of Optimus Prime, caught at one of the very rare times he seemed to ever actually sit anywhere and do nothing at all. She'd had no idea a photo of Prime actually existed, or at least none of his 'bot-mode. He had always taken far greater measures then the rest, to avoid being seen and filmed. And in the base, it seemed he had so little connection to the children… She began to laugh slightly as she studied the image. The angle was quite odd, but of course it would be, taken from the floor, by someone so relatively small. She assumed at first that Miko had taken the picture, but looked again and saw that that was not so. The tiny, colorful girl was perched grinning in one huge hand, legs dangling over a couple fingertips. Prime actually looked almost amused. Arcee wiped away a stream of washer fluid as it pooled in one of her optics.

She got up to set the pad back on the shelf, and lay back down to rest again. But still recharge was impossible. After what seemed like hours but must only have really been fifteen minutes, she got up again. Picking up the pad again, she left the room, letting the door close behind her, and walked slowly down the hall, trying to keep her steps quiet. The base was dimly lit with only its backlighting powered on through the night cycle. She knew that two 'bots should be pulling in anytime and wondered if perhaps they were back already. She debated tapping on their doors to check in, but decided against it, in case they were already in and recharging.

Arcee muffled her favorite human curse, as her arm slammed hard against something in the dimness. She nearly dropped the data-pad, as her left hand automatically grabbed for her right arm. Cursing again silently she stood beneath a dim blue light and looked around. She had slammed her wrist hard against the edge of a disassembled work station, stored in the hall for lack of a better place to put the thing. She had known full well it was there and banged the thing anyway. She shook her head and checked her wrist in the dim light. She shrugged. Not bleeding, so she was not going to worry about it.

She had been meaning to sit and look over more photos, in the common room, but a bright light shining ahead caught her attention. Was there someone else up? Maybe that night no one could get any recharge. She hoped for a second her clumsy thud against that table had not woken anyone. She walked on.

It was the medbay that was lighted. Arcee realized that as she got closer to it and the couple of doors near it. That door was, as typical, left open, and the light shone out into the hall brightly. Not sure why, Arcee approached the door, and then slowly made her way inside.

With some surprise, she found Knockout, left alone in there and sitting up quite well by himself, both legs in front of him, and clearly one still entirely immobile. The monitors had been detached from his body, and he balanced a data-pad on one folded arm, while flipping the pages with the other hand. Near his head, on the worktable, sat a decent stack of other pads.

Arcee had come and gone from the medbay many times in the last days, helping out with a mostly unconscious and clearly incapacitated patient. She had taken a shift, sitting quietly to listen to monitors, and had not been uneasy in the least about it. She had gladly talked with him when he had been awake. But even then, while conscious and conversing he had been quite clearly weakened and ready to drop into recharge just as soon as he was left alone again. Finding him now sitting up, reading someone on the pad, she thought he looked so much stronger. She had never been alone with him before in the time since he had moved to their side, and been assigned to the base. The time she watched over him in power down, didn't count. Arcee backed up slightly to lean against the wall closest to the door. She wondered if it was wrong that she still felt fear welling up while so close to him.

"I see I'm not alone after all in my inability to recharge then," Knockout said. He was smiling at her slightly. It was not a threatening kind of smile she had so often seen on his face, but still she backed closer to the wall anyway.

"Yeah," she answered, forcing her voice to remain even. It would be wrong of her to run out of there, and she knew that. So she stayed still and made herself smile back. "On Earth, they call this insomnia I think."

"I believe so… though I never studied human language half as much as you might have done…"

"What are you reading?" Arcee asked him causally. She made herself step forward again, away from the wall. She scolded herself for being ridiculous.

Knockout closed the pad and put it down within his reach. "Oh, just a pile of stuff Ratchet loaned me to read. Mostly medical and science related. I talked to him a bit earlier, mentioned that my knowledge in some areas is honestly a bit lacking. He brought this back for me. Said since I'm going to be stuck in here a while, I might as well study."

"Sounds… interesting," Arcee replied hesitantly. She had never been much for intense study on anything really. More for hands on learning and shooting as needed.

"Oh it is," Knockout said, and she found herself actually amazed to realize he was actually interested in reading those pads. She let her head drop a second in embarrassment. Why should she have been so surprised to find that he was genuinely interested in his job? She sat down on the bench, daring to let her guard down far more.

"I can feel my foot again," he told her. His expression turned to one of excitement. "Ratchet thinks I'll walk again very soon. And my body armor is all rebuilt, ready for reattachment, probably today. The connections are repairing themselves well. It'll take a bit of hard work, but I think I'll live."

He laughed. Arcee giggled a bit.

Still holding the data-pad in her right hand, she rubbed her right wrist as it started to ache from the recent thump. She had thought it would have simply gone unnoted, but Knockout was looking straight from her face to her right arm in seconds. She shook her head slightly. Just leave it to a medical officer to notice even that small a thing.

"Arcee, what happened? You've hurt yourself?"

"Not anything to worry about," she brushed it off. She hardly thought a thing of it herself. I've been hurt far worse. All those years of battling the… hmm… never mind."

"What happened?"

Arcee laughed and shook her head at her own mishap. Sarcastically she answered. "Oh it was a truly epic battle this time. Myself against an enraged, unused worktable. It was dark, the thing came out of nowhere. It was terrible, but I managed to finally escape without calling for backup" She shook her head again and looked at the floor, rubbing her wrist again as it started to hurt worse. "Usually poor Bulkhead is our resident walking accident."

"Would you let me take a look at that?"

Arcee was conflicted as she sat still on the bench. Her feeling of danger had all but vanished slowly as she talked with him awhile. She had even come so close to forgetting he had been the enemy and nearly slipped with her words, before catching herself, in worry of offending him. He was looking at her intently, and obviously the expression was far from threatening. He had never threatened anyone since he had defected to her team. But the optics that studied her, looking for any sign of damage worth worrying about, were the bright red of so many enemies she had learned to dodge, and shoot at and stare down, with her senses on high alert. She got up slowly and stepped closer to him.

"Well it's not bleeding at least," he said, holding her arm gently to look at the underside of the wrist. "Doesn't look like any of the little connections to the hand were damaged. Certainly nothing broken. I can't imagine though why you would say this is nothing. Arcee, you've torn right through your armor plating and clear to the wiring."

"It's still just a small gash. I figure why panic?"

"That would have to have been a very sharp corner. Hmm… It looks like the impact cracked the armor down a seam. Ooh that must hurt like something awful." He looked sympathetic, but she again only brushed it off.

"It's a simple but needed repair," Knockout said, almost scolding like any other medic might well have done. "I can fix you up in minutes."

"but… you…"

He looked at her, shaking his head. "I'm a bit disabled for the moment, obviously. But I can still work on such a simple thing as this."

She stood still for a long moment, now holding her injured wrist again and eventually leaning over to set her pad down behind on the bench, before she ended up dropping it. Knockout looked at her with a serious expression, before he quietly asked, "do you trust me?"

Arcee nodded hesitantly, surprising herself by doing so. Following his direction, she handed him a little welding tool from the worktable, and cautiously let her take her arm again

"It was not a spur of the moment choice I made, you know," Knockout said, speaking unexpectedly, as he looked down, working carefully. "I didn't exactly just jump without thinking."

Arcee gave a look of confusion, that she hoped he would read as such. But she remembered quickly that he could not currently she her expression. "Sorry?"

"Changing sides, I mean. I know you've wondered, but never really dared to ask."

Arcee looked at the floor for a moment, considering. She looked back up at him, though he was still intently looking at this work. "It never was only about a fear of being fired straight out an airlock, was it?"

"Oh, I have little doubt at all, that Starscream would have fired me out the airlock, just as I said. He had little use left for me. But turning on him… I did it because I finally saw my chance. There had been other chances and each time I just walked away, backed out, doubted, feared that I might just be scrapped by at least one of you while you laughing thinking you had caught me in some game. Finally, it was now or never. I might well have died that day and I knew that. If I was going to die, I at least needed to try…"

Knockout let go of Arcee's arm. "Told you I could fix you up, good as new."

"Thank you. You are actually good at this."

He laughed slightly and shrugged at her. "That surprises you?"

"No. Well maybe… no, I suppose it doesn't."

"No more pain then? It shouldn't hurt nearly so much now?"

"It is better. Thank you.," Arcee replied gratefully.

"You're welcome." Knockout's expression changed suddenly from his typical confidence, which had started to resurface again, to one of doubt. "If I am to be honest, Arcee… It's no secret I get scared when I shouldn't. I was always somewhat of a laughing stock on the warship I must say, for the constant dodging gunfire and diving for the ground. But, that moment I said I was joining the 'winning team…" that was the most terrified I've ever been in my life."

Footsteps in the hall, and moving in the direction of the common area, caught her attention. The medbay had no windows. There were only a few small ones in the whole base. But she understood that it must have been morning by then. She stepped with some hesitation toward the door.

"I've got to run, grab a mission schedule. I think I'm on construction... You should try again to get a bit of recharge in. Ratchet is never one to take no for an answer on that one."

"I'm still quite perfectly wide awake," Knockout shrugged. "I have my reading to do."

"Recharge now, read later." Stepping back in to grab her nearly forgotten data-pad, Arcee walked out slowly, shaking her head.

She nearly bumped straight into Ratchet as she walked into the common room, and heading toward the mission board. He had walked into the room from a door at the other side of the room, and was probably on his way right across the room. Arcee stopped her forward motion before she crashed into the considerably bigger 'bot.

"I forgot you were always the one up first in the early hours," she commented.

"Indeed." He replied back, thoughtfully. "Though in this particular case I've been out of recharge much of the night."

Arcee looked up at him, almost dumbfounded by that point. "Seriously. Did no one get any rest in this base last night?"

The old medic considered. "Umm, I did hear two come in very late from the search mission. Doesn't sound like they actually slept much. I heard chatting at the far end of their hallway. Bulkhead's light was on a fair bit. 'Bee probably slept just fine. I was awake corresponding with Fowler for a while."

"Agent Fowler. Our old contact back in Nevada?"

Ratchet nodded briefly in silent confirmation, and then said, "he's planning a bit of a reunion, actually."

Arcee's interest was caught by that. She looked up at him in surprise and could not hide her excitement. "Reunion? You mean with the kids?"

"Exactly. I'll be returning to Earth in the next couple of days, obviously. While I've been back here Fowler's been busy, trying to get a few connections and call in some favors. Our second base is still standing. He and I work there, and Jack helps out on his weekends away from school. Raf's family has moved away to New Mexico. He can be picked up and driven back. Bumblebee would probably love to go and fetch him. Miko is back in Japan, but we can ground-bridge her. I'll send Bulkhead through the bridge so that he can pick her up somewhere in the city." We have all such a connection with those small humans, and they with us. Probably a bad idea to never see them again, just because Cybertron is rebuilding."

"You actually sound excited about this, Ratchet." Arcee tilted her faceplates up in a lovely grin at him. "I never thought I'd see it. The grumpy old doc-bot, actually excited to gather up the human children again."

"What can I say, Arcee. I suppose even I got attached at some point. I quite like them. And it's been four of their months now. I would bet that little Raf is bigger, and that hyper Miko is slightly less so."

"Keep me posted. When the time comes, I'll bring the team over." Arcee stopped dead for a second or two. "Oh… what will we do about Knockout?"

"Bring him," Ratchet answered as though it should have been obvious. "He's Autobot too."

Arcee found herself hesitating, her uncertainty creeping back in. She stumbled over words as she tried to express too many thoughts and ask too many questions at once. "Well yes, but not official yet… Do the kids even know about this… Miko hates him. She knocked him out once. Fowler is going to hit the roof, as they say, if we bring a 'con through the space-bridge."

"We'll figure that out later. Fowler will understand. There are such things as human wartime defectors too, you know. I think that meeting the kids and the agent, as an Autobot, could be good for our new teammate."

Arcee looked up into the optics of the bigger 'bot. She questioned silently and tried to imagine what thoughts he must have had. He always was so hard to read. "You really do trust him then, don't you? You believe in his wish for redemption?"

Ratchet looked down at her, and leaned down a bit, with one of his rare smiles across his faceplate. He nodded slowly at her. "Arcee, Prime believed him first, well before any of us. Redemption and a second chance is the right of any sentient being, and we all know he said that many times. I spoke to him once, not long before the end… he told me he knew of Knockout's wish for such redemption long before you saw him turn on Starscream. I never could see it myself, though I do wish could have. But somewhere, sometime, there had to have been a moment when his faith in the cause of conquest died. I'm not sure he will ever know exactly what that moment was himself. Anyone in his position, would only deny it awhile, try harder to be even worse, to prove they are the one to be feared, to ruin any chance they might have at the redemption they seek, because in all honestly it scares them to death."

"It sounds like you've known other defectors, personally."

"There were a few over the years. Each one's story quite different, but all of them confused, lost for a while, trying hard to prove themselves. They are always so scared when they first come over. Each fearing firstly that we will turn on them, blame them the first time something goes wrong. And secondly fearing that the 'cons will kill them for it, and offline us right along with them."

Arcee stood silently for a long moment, her processor filled with so many emotions. And that only grew worse as a new thought entered her mind at the thought of a coming reunion on Earth. For the second time in hours, she forced leaking washer fluid from her optics. "Ratchet… did anyone tell the kids yet, about the fate of Optimus Prime?"

The old medic nodded once very slightly. He looked just as saddened at the thought of actually speaking on the matter. "They keep in touch a bit, as you would have guessed. I informed Jack when I returned to Earth the last time. We called the others together. I was saddened and surprised at just how devastated each of them were. Miko especially."

He paused for a moment, clearly choosing his words, and then went on, quietly. "I realize only in hindsight that while they all loved him of course, little Miko had always been the one to try the hardest to impress him, to make him proud of her. She felt like she had so much less to offer and that only made her try harder and harder. I only wish he could have told her before we left for Cybertron, that he never thought she held less value."

Arcee laughed slightly, nodding her agreement, and smiling at old memories. "She was his littlest Wrecker."

"Reunion?" A voice from a doorway behind them, made both turn around. Arcee grinned and Ratchet groaned, to see Bulkhead in the doorway, with Smokescreen right behind him, clamoring for space. "What's this about a reunion, then?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes/ Okay I spent most of the other day writing something I had thought would be chapter four. Lots of action, decent length, plot development. I planned to go to work, then come home, edit and post… until I realized while on my coffee break, that the chapter didn't fit at this time. I knew I had basically written a lead up to the darn ending, instead of something that could lead where I want first. It just bugged me until I decided to write an entirely new chapter for now, and to save the old one, to be reworked a bit for later in the story.**

 **I am fully intent on sending the 'bots back to Earth for the reunion with the kids. That should happen in within a couple chapters. I'm amazed at the reviews from readers who clearly liked the idea and wanted to see it. Thanks a ton for the feedback on that. I keep writing because I know people are still liking this. Reviews make me happy, lol.**

 **Slight warning here; this chapter will contain some drunken behavior, and also some discussion of mental health related stuff. Neither is overly offensive, but I'm throwing a warning out there just in case.**

The common room of the Autobot base, had always been a place to work, a place of productivity and organization. It housed the ground bridge controls, a couple of large work stations, monitors, keyboards, comm links, and so much else needed in command and planning. But the room was just as much a place to unwind and sit down to socialize. There were places to sit reading data pads, and a shelving unit full of them now. Someone at one point had installed a modified version of a video gaming system common on Earth, and so often in their off duty hours a couple of them would play with it. There was a sound system for music, a projector for holographic images. Every one of the base's six separate passage ways had been constructed leading right of the common room, like spokes extending out from a wheel. It only made sense during their off duty hours as well as on, most of the 'bots tended to occupy the common room.

One evening most of them sat planning their reunion trip, back to Earth. It was fast approaching, and there was a general sense and feeling of excitement around the base. Arcee sat on the floor, in front of a data pad shelf, flipping through her pad filled with photo-files again.

"You've got to show these to the kids when we get back," she said, laughing.

"Let me see, let me see," Bulkhead called from his place across the room. He was on a bench with his huge feet propped up on the edge of a computer work table. Arcee got up to give him the pad. Bumblebee joined Bulk' on the bench so that he could look too.

"Hmm" bulkhead commented, when he came upon a picture of himself with Miko on his shoulder on the first page. "It's true what they say. The camera really does add ten tons."

"Nah, Bulk'" Bumblebee answered. He laughed loudly as he elbowed his teammate in his huge shoulder panel. "It's the human. She just makes you look fat."

Bulkhead looked at the picture again, a grin on his green face plates. "It'll be great to see her again. You must miss Raf too."

'Bee grinned back. "I've been practicing at that video game. I think I can beat him by now! I still hear from him once in a while though. Just the other day the kid actually sent me a text message in Cybertronian."

"Woah. Kid really kept up with learning then, after Ratchet started teaching him."

"They are still working on it. First human to pick ours as a second language…. Well third. Spanish is second. Err… forth. I think he's also learning Japanese from Miko."

Wheeljack had recently manufactured some high grade energon, and he brought a good amount of it with him that evening when he wandered in from somewhere inside the base. Bulkhead was quick to accept some, Arcee and Smokescreen with only slightly more hesitation. Bumblebee was finally convinced to try it, though he never had before, after he'd made it clear that only a small amount would be quite enough.

"I have no idea what you did to this stuff," Arcee commented, shaking her head after she took a drink. "But I swear to Primus, too much of this and we'll be flat on the floor." She made a face, and then took another drink.

"Haha," Bulkhead said. "Just like old times back in the wrecker days. A job well done and we'd all down some of the strongest high grade Cybertron had ever seen."

Knockout appeared in the doorway, leading away from the hallway that housed his living quarters. With some hesitation he made his way into the common room to join the group. He'd begun to join in more during his off time. He took a seat closest to the doorway.

"Hey Bulk. Bulk, remember that crazy night back behind Iacon?" Wheeljack laughed loudly as he recalled antics of days gone by. "Four of us, standing around out back, behind the place, casually tossing that old grenade casing around, calm as anything."

"That old commander hit the deck fast, that's for sure." Bulkhead continued the story, hands on his knees laughing. "Probably didn't help that you had yelled about how it was going to blow, and no one could remember how to dispose of one."

"Right, right! But just who was that certain green painted scrapper, who yelled 'catch' as you threw it right to him. It never was entirely clear if he was going to lose his fuel tanks, or shoot us all for that!" Every one of the rest of them laughed, most of them so hard that their optics leaked coolant fluid.

"I used to wish I could have been a wrecker," Smokescreen said. "Your crew got so much done, saw so much action. Of course it was no more by the time I joined up with the Autobot ranks. Elite guard was interesting though. Learned a lot for sure. Trouble is, it's just far too much structure, too much discipline."

"Which can be good too…" Bulkhead said, as he tried to hand one of the little drinking containers to Knockout.

The medic only waved a hand in front of him and then shook his head firmly. "No, no. I try to never touch the stuff."

"So stop trying," Arcee giggled at him, grinning. She had been hesitant to drink at first but admittedly she was having fun. It had been so long since she had sat and laughed with friends over drinks, that she could not remember when it had actually been.

"I'm serious," Knockout said. "High grade can make one entirely unsteady, clumsy, and lacking in good judgment. Not a wise state for one in the medical field I should think."

Wheeljack sat laughing for a second. "Oh come on. I'm not sure being stone sober is truly a requirement. Bulk', you remember that medic back when we started out. Pretty little thing, oh but what was her name now? She could drink with the best of us on a good night. So one night, you and me, out helping her do felid repairs so she could haul wounded into the bay, her half as wasted as us. Some young bot had nearly gotten his scrappin' foot blown off…"

"Now please explain to me how that situation is in the least bit funny," Knockout demanded. He put on a look of arrogant pride, and his tone said that such a thing was far beneath him. He was smiling though and stifling his own laughter. That in turn made the rest laugh again, and he laughed with them. He accepted the drink that Bulkhead was still trying to hand him.

"Hey, anyone remember this one?" Bumblebee questioned. He was referring again to the photo files, as he held the pad up with one hand. Miko had taught Smokescreen the old human trick of holding up two fingers behind someone else's head in a photo, and sure enough he had done that very thing to Bulkhead. That photo got a few more good chuckles from the group.

"Can I see that?" Knockout asked, curious.

Bulkhead shrugged. "Sure. Mostly it's a bunch of pictures from Earth. Most of 'em are pretty funny."

Any one of the 'bots might have wanted to run the pad over to him at the far side of the room, but they all knew full well by then that he would only wave a hand at them refusing to be helped. Since the attack on the building site, they had seen his great and surprising determination and sometimes frustrating level of stubbornness. He'd wanted to be able to walk, and then to stand for longer at one time, and he'd taken on the challenge of making his body do it, with the undying refusal to fail of any Autobot. It had been sixteen days now since the construction site mess, and there only a slight drag with the left foot. It did make him look a bit like he was constantly at risk of falling, but that had not actually happened since day nine. He grabbed the pad from Bulkhead and went to sit again. A couple of them grinned. He was getting quicker, less unsteady.

"I've got a story for you," Arcee said to the team. "Hardly one to match the wreckers, but… So me and Cliffjumper, on Earth maybe one Earth month, out on patrol around the base, trolling for energon signatures, looking out for 'con fliers. Same scrap new pile, yeah. Well of course they come out of nowhere. Must've thought they would sneak in, bump us both us off before we know what hit us. So Cliff goes right for his blasters, I leap over the overpass guard railing. He needs cover. I make some decent, now hidden back up… It's Jasper Nevada. Small town, middle of the day. People are gonna ask questions, take pictures or worse, get killed. We transform back to vehicle form, drive off across the desert. Let them chase us, try to lure them away from Jas…"

She was distracted from her tale, by the sudden crash of Bulkhead, smashing clumsily into a book shelf as he got up to refill drinking containers. She shook her head and laughed it off, unsure whether he had actually had too much, or was just being typical clumsy Bulkhead. He walked away from the now slightly unstable shelf though and went about refilling just fine.

"The photo files are interesting," Knockout said. He handed the data pad to Arcee, who occupied the seat closest to his. He looked down for a few long seconds before saying quietly, and with clear regret. "I never really got to know a human. I just thought once that they were fun to torment…"

"Regrets is never any use at all," Wheeljack spoke up suddenly. "Neither is guilt over the past. I'll only eat you alive if you let it."

He obviously meant to make a good and helpful point, but it was also clear when he spoke that he had had far too much to drink.

"See that's your problem I would think. Guilt. Regret." He pointed right at Knockout as he talked. "You prob'ly felt it too before you defected. This is not new. It can't be. And you hid that shame of self-hate for years behind a pretty paintjob!"

"Wheeljack!" Arcee snapped. "Entirely uncalled for."

Knockout was staring at the floor, with a look of utter shock and even near terror. He was usually eloquent when he felt like conversing with the group, but now he was silent. His mouth moving mutely as though he was searching for a snappy comeback that just never came.

"What?'' The wrecker said. He threw both hands up in the air to express himself. "I'm just sayin'. He's obviously conflicted. Or was. The guilt destroyed him, and one can't just expose themselves as destroyed, broken. So protect the finish and the paint, and hope it can hide the wreckage of whatever's within."

"I think you've gone too far," Bulkhead stated in low tones. So little concerned him, and clearly he was concerned now. He grabbed his old friend's arm, almost a little too roughly, and tried hard to make him stop his rambling on.

"What do you say?" The white wrecker gestured to the 'con defector. "It's a self-esteem issue. Gotta be. We need to teach our new friend here, how to fight like we did back in the good old days. Now that's what he needs. What do you think, Knockout? We've all seen you get in some pretty creative moves, and you've got some talent for scaring the frag out of someone, sure enough. But can you really throw a punch? Do you know how to shoot? Anything decent in battle?"

"Wheeljack!" Arcee snapped again. "Look. You probably mean well. I see that. But please knock it off."

"I… I don't know… I can't… I never…" Knockout had found his voice again, but clearly he was forcing it to work through a strange kind of rapidly growing panic. Arcee moved to sit closer to him on the bench he occupied. She felt like clearly someone needed to protect him, or at least help, and she wasn't sure exactly how. She felt her own uncertainly creeping in, as she wondered with dread just how badly this could go.

Knockout was relatively heavily armed, and Arcee knew that he still possessed his integrated weapons. There had been talk when he had first defected, of deactivating his weapons systems. There was no debate that his were particularly terrifying, even for a 'con. But it had been decided almost as fast, that that would have been wrong to force that on him, while still trying to gain his trust in them. Arcee now found herself staring from him to Wheeljack, who still stared at him drunkenly taunting him, and wondered with growing horror, if Knockout would perceive himself as cornered and actually dare to pull out a buzz saw blade on his new teammate. A power drill would be nearly as bad.

She slowly moved to put an arm around him, ready to help him to his feet and make a fast retreat with him. He had not pulled a weapon of any kind once on the day he'd been brought back badly injured, and she decided that was a good sign now. He'd been in a full on panic for a while then, and if he hadn't done it in that situation, she had to trust that he probably never would.

Bumblebee leapt suddenly from his seat nearby, and without warning he shoved a clenched fist into Wheeljack's faceplates. The wrecker fell backwards over the bench he had been sitting on. His drinking container spilled all over the place. Close to both of them, Bulkhead only gasped in shock, while Smokescreen looked horrified. "'Bee," Arcee cried, Jumping up at once. She'd been worried about Knockout attacking. It would never have occurred to her to worry about 'Bee, of all bots. "What in the name of Primus are you doing?"

"Loud mouth, know it all," 'Bee snapped, before he ran out toward the outer doors, without looking back.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Bumblebee roared away from the Autobot base in vehicle form, reaching near top speed in seconds. He left the smooth, wide road well designed for vehicle modes, and his tires bumped along the rough uneven ground to the right of it. He had no idea where he was going. Nor did he care exactly. He was just angry – filled with a sudden and growing sense of rage and he didn't know exactly why.

He had felt it for longer than he would admit, even to himself, and he didn't understand it. He was not an angry sort of bot, prone to falling victim to his own temper. Generally, among the team, it would have been Bulkhead that might have let anger get the best of him. Perhaps Arcee, to an extent. But they would never hit a teammate. 'Bee knew he'd crossed the line, but the feeling that still consumed him in his rage, was that he still didn't exactly care.

He picked up speed, pushing himself harder to drive faster. He turned his mirrors down, and didn't bother with anything behind him. He was barely looking in front of him for that matter. His front view, which sat low to the ground behind his headlights, was blurring with coolant and washer fluid spilling from his now hidden optics, tucked way inside the car from. He tried to force himself to stop that at once. Screamed at himself silently, that it only made him pathetic He pushed his speed even further, channeling his energy into driving instead of crying his optics out, but it didn't help anything.

The world was still a mostly quiet place. Small groups of refugees had returned, and he knew there was a chance he might run into someone, but it was so unlikely on a huge planet with a low population. He knew he should be careful of his driving, just in case, but he couldn't find the will power to slow down, or to look at where he was actually going. His comm bleeped from the front of his dashboard console. He ignored it. He swore under his intakes and drove on, moving further from the designated road.

The comm bleep again, as he swore at the thing in rage. A voice on the comm unit spoke urgently, "'Bee. Please come in. Where are you? We just want to know if you are alright…" He deactivated the thing instead of answering, and he didn't feel like listening to it either. He mumbled a loud and most obnoxious string of Earth's strongest language, just because as it was, swearing felt somehow liberating.

He screamed out loud at no one. He felt like punching a wall. He wanted to scream at the top of his voice. He felt and near overwhelming urge to curl up somewhere and cry for some reason he didn't know and he only directly his own rage at himself for wishing he could do that. He was in the warrior class now. Graduated months before, and even before then he would never have allowed himself to do any such thing. He spun a few tight circles, squealing his tires loudly, and pushing his engine hard, before driving forward again, even faster.

He was heading toward the edge of the flatland, out toward a place where the ground dropped off into steep jagged cliffs, cut into the land, over the sulfur field below. He knew where he was, but all the same it barely registered. In his furious mind, all he knew was a need to keep on driving. To keep on retreating from the feeling of upset that he could not and wouldn't dare to analyze.

The little sport car's tires left the ground, first at the front and then quickly the back end followed. He understood then in a moment of sudden clarity that he had driving right off the edge without noticing the approaching drop. He spun his wheels but it did no good. There was no grip to be found beneath any one of them.

He was thrown from his vehicle mode roughly, and he tried flipping to face the other direction, trying to find a handhold. It wasn't working. He felt his left hand graze the side of something solid, but there was no way to reach and grab a hold fast enough. Within his processor he was vaguely aware that his emergency beacon had triggered. His rage was all but forgotten, as he reached again for a hold, nearly found one and slipped. He felt his body bouche hard off some unknown surface then go into a terrible rolling motion, down a bad incline of the slope. His head smacked hard off something or other. He felt one more hard bounce, and it all went to blackness.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Arcee drove fast toward the well of the Allspark. She truthfully had no idea where she was going, no clue where to check first. But she was following a hunch. If she could have shaking her head in disbelief in her motorcycle form, she would have been doing it all the way put there. She asked herself out loud there was no one around to hear her question, if when she did find Bumblebee, she should hug him and reach out to talk with him, smack him for his insanity. This was, she reminded herself in growing confusion, the second time in a week, he had taken off and eventually shut down his own comm.

She approached the well after a long drive, and transformed out of her vehicle form to walk over. A figure sitting down, and looking small on the huge outer rim of the massive ancient structure, made her sigh with relief. She began to hurry closer, but quickly realized it was not 'Bee. The figure was red, and she saw the well-known pair of over the top fancy wheel rims as she approached.

"Knockout?" she questioned, still moving closer anyway. When had he left the base? "What are you doing way out here?"

He gave a look in her direction and shrugged his shoulders with his hands in front of him. "oh, I just decided to go out for a little drive."

He was silent for a moment before he asked. "Still no sign of bumblebee then I suppose? I would assume you came here looking for him."

"No sign of him again. And I was sure he'd be here. Something told me to go to the well. Sadly, there's little I can do right now. I can't keep looking when I don't know where to look. I can only hope he'll either comm someone soon, or finally answer his own." Arcee sat down near him on the edge of the rim. She pulled her legs up in front of her and wrapped her arms around her knees. Looking up at him, she spoke again, changing the subject. "Hey, don't worry too much about Wheeljack. He's a good bot usually. He was on his own too long, and before that, I think he must have gotten a little too used to talking to wreckers. You look better now."

"I'm fine. I just came out here to drive and calm down. That's what I do. I drive and I think."

"It's been ages since anyone got the bright idea to bring out some high grade. Last time it was nothing like that mess. I didn't think it would get out of hand."

"Well you've obviously never partaken with a group of already enraged 'cons, I see." Knockout laughed a little, but his tone was also a little too serious.

They both fell silent for a short while, each one looking down idly into the endless darkness of the well, and each thinking their own thoughts. Knockout spoke up again. "I think that old wrecker might be right in a way. I always have been more than a little self-absorbed. Oh like I care. It's who I am. What can I say? But I never really thought before about why exactly. I mean, why do scuffmarks matter so much anyway?"

"He may be right. He may be wrong," Arcee said firmly. "You've got forever to figure yourself out. The point is he was out of line. Wow, I never would have thought he'd act like that after too much high grade. No fraggin'' filter for his vocal processor, that's for sure."

"Well high grade is known to make one do some crazy things. I never would have thought Bumblebee would be the type to punch a teammate either."

Arcee shook her head again. She let her head rest on her folded knees. "He's not. He's absolutely not that type at all. Tonight, I can't say I think it was even the drink that made him do that. It's just too out of character. That's not the 'Bee I know." She considered for a moment. "You've known him a while too. Even fighting on the opposite side. Tell me, he was never the kind that would have just stood up and punched someone like that."

"He's a good fighter," Knockout rolled his optics and frowned for a second. "Believe me I would know, after years of fighting Autobots for control of energon mines and relics. But punching a teammate? Never."

Arcee signed hard. "I just wish I could help him. I wish I knew what it was I could actually help him with in the first place. He's reckless. He's looking for a fight… Sorry. I'm just rambling."

Knockout looked down at her. "Go on. A little rambling never did any harm."

"'Bee is still young. He's younger than Smokescreen as I understand it," Arcee said, still speaking out loud to get her thoughts in order. She shook her head lightly at the last bit and said with a chuckle. "Yeah, you'd probably never guess that most days." Her voice turned serious again, thoughtful. "He's just not fully dealing with the loss of our Prime it seems. We are all still sad sometimes, though we understand the reasons for everything. I would imagine it's much worse for poor 'Bee. Optimus rescued him once years ago, spoke up for him when he should have been scrap. Became a role model and pretty much a parent figure."

"Oh," Knockout appeared genuinely surprised at that. The 'bots know that, but he of course had not.

Arcee went on, explaining. "I didn't know any of them at that time. I joined up with them much later. But I guess 'Bee was just some young one, newly drafted for scouting duty among hundreds of others, barely old enough to be away from home. He found himself on a battle field one night, sent to deliver a message to an Autobot commander. Megatron landed with part of his own fleet, and the story goes that he was mad as anything over some recent losses of his own. He had a score to settle. Instead of calling an attack on the army, or just going after the commander, he saw a chance to make an example to our side. Unfortunately, that was by grabbing the young kid that was still just standing holding a data pad to hand over. He was in a rage, and not looking for negotiations. He pounded the kid to near scrap, and for probably no reason at all, but his own twisted anger, made a point of utterly destroying his vocalizer systems. He ripped the whole vocalizer apart and part of his faceplate with it. He tossed him over the edge of the cliffs near the battle field, left him bleeding out over the ground, and flew off like it was all just business. Apparently even Starscream, who had landed right behind him, yelled that the act was ridiculous and unnecessary. He tried to make him stop, before he horribly killed an innocent young kid. That's saying a lot.

"'Bee was hauled away to a field hospital. Ratchet did his best with what he had. He saved his life but that was almost not enough. Prime visited the facility weeks later, and noticed the kid, terrified, constantly shaking, crying silently with washer fluid all over his face, refusing to eat. He'd given up, typed once that he should have been left for scrap. He was going to end some up mute beggar on the streets of the capitol and Prime saw that sad fate, but would never accept it. He saw something no one else had. The kid was too small, too weak, too slow for battle, and now he was damaged and not just in body. But Optimus gave him a job, paid him a little for his work, taught him to shoot, taught him to fight, to lead, to trust his own judgment. He would never let him give up until he was better than the rest, because he knew that better than the best was the way he could survive."

When Arcee finished speaking again, Knockout was staring at her, with his mouth open slightly and a look of utter disbelief and shock spread over his faceplates. He shook his head slightly, clearly trying to shake off his horror at what he had learned. Slowly he said in a quiet voice, "such cruelty and utter sadism, has never been above Megatron. I'm glad it was Bumblebee that finally killed him. Even Starscream was never successful at that, and he hated him most of all."

"I often suspected the situation between Starscream and his 'lord and master' was a bit more complicated than we ever really saw." Arcee stated honestly. She shook her head as she thought it over out loud. As Autobots, we always just assumed 'Scream was some spoiled little favorite of his, who wanted his job…."

A high pitched and urgent bleep inside her processor made Arcee leap to her feet in under a second. Knockout only looked at her for a second, silently questioning until she explained. "Bumblebee's signal is still inactive, but his emergency beacon has just gone off. He's either injured, or under attack!" She was in her vehicle mode in under a second, and looking for the source of the signal, as it displayed on her front panel, trying to track it fast.

"I'm going with you," Knockout said, before she might even have had a chance to refuse. He got up as quickly as he could, before he transformed and his voice continued speaking now from inside his car form. "I may still be slow on foot, but I'm as fast as ever as an automobile. You might need a medic."

"He's west of here," Arcee answered. "About thirty kilometers out."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes/ Longest chapter so far. I saw no reason to break it up, so I just kept on going. I'm realizing as I'm writing lately that this plot is getting slightly more complex than I had planned on it being. Oh well. I'm running with it anyway. Might just end up with a longer finished piece than I thought. Starting out with this story, I decided to try my best to keep any known details accurate and in line with the TFP universe. I realized recently that I've already slightly goofed on that. Anyone who knows the series well, might notice I got a bit of 'Bee's backstory wrong. Doesn't really matter plot wise of course, but I had completely forgotten that the show actually mentioned he was interrogated and refused to give information. I remembered that only after I posted last week. My bad on that.**

 **I'm noticing as well that some characters are much harder to write properly compared to others, and I do hope I'm getting them close enough. Arcee is trickier than I thought. Knockout is downright challenging… A couple others are actually slightly OTC for a reason, and I'm aware that they seem a bit off.**

 **As always thanks for the reviews. I love the feedback and any ideas.**

The long smooth roadway had run out kilometres before, and the terrain was becoming steadily rougher. Gigantic chunks of metals of varied sorts littered the ground, and those were closer together and larger all the time. The elevation dropped rapidly to the left, and to the right it was completely impassable. Arcee raced around a natural bend in the makeshift pathway, forced to turn sharp and dodge to the left to avoid slamming against the biggest of the metal boulders she'd seen so far. She checked her tracker again and veered to the right as soon as she had an opening between the increasing obstacles. She knew she should have been slowing down well before then, but against her better judgment she sped up. The flashing signal from the rescue beacon was close now, but she didn't see any sign of Bumblebee.

"Arcee. Watch out!" Knockout's shout from behind made her drag her attention back from her tracker, just in time to dodge another huge border before she smashed into it hard. The incline abruptly grew sharper. She stopped to think, to collect herself. Knockout rolled up beside her and braked hard.

"Thanks." Arcee said, looking out over the terrible terrain which didn't look like it would get any better. "That was close."

"Still picking up that signal?"

Arcee looked around. "He's close. But I don't see him."

She transformed to her bot mode and crept further down the incline, looking around again, and shaking her head in growing concern. "Knockout, I think he may have gone off the road."

"Over these cliffs? It's more than possible." Knockout transformed as well, and pointed over the great expanse below them. "Not likely from this trail though, but that one on the other side. You can't tell from here but the drop is sudden and the ground is loose and unstable. He wouldn't know the road, and if he was driving too fast…"

"Where are we?" Arcee questioned suddenly. She had not put any thought into it before, intent only on following the rescue beacon. But she realized she didn't know the place at all herself. Yet clearly Knockout did. She shivered slightly as she understood they had driven well outside of known Autobot territory, and she didn't think it was among the few still never claimed neutral areas either.

"This was a Decepticon training field," Knockout said. "It was used mostly by the minority ground forces, but it had its uses for the fliers too."

Arcee shivered again, and felt her fuel tank drop a little. Years upon endless years had taught her well never to race blindly into enemy territory, and though the danger in that no longer existed as it once had, still it just felt wrong to be there. Glancing back at Knockout, she saw how he appeared as uneasy as her, and maybe much more so. Looking around again for any sign of an accident, she shook off her unease and stepped back from the incline.

"This is your home ground, and I'm lost out here," she said still forcing away the fear that the place instilled in her. "I'll follow you. There's got to be a way down there."

"There's somewhat of a road," Knockout said as he transformed back to vehicle mode and Arcee immediately followed. He rolled forward and slowly began to drive again. "It's steep and narrow, and bumpy. We'll need to go slow."

He slowly rounded a bend and she saw what he was talking about. It was not a road, so much as an access trail down around the edge of a steep bank of jagged cliffs. Not only was it steeper than she would have guessed, it was also clearly slippery under the tiny and shifting bits of metal fibers and dust. She considered once carefully, and knew there was no way such a path would be safe for a two wheeler. She opted instead to run carefully down on two feet, in bot mode. Knockout's vehicle form was barely able to go much faster on that trail than her running speed anyway.

"Arcee to base," she said, speaking to her commlink as she made her way steadily down around the edge of the cliffs. "Is anyone reading me over there?"

"Load and clear, Arcee," Bulkhead's voice came back over her comm, and she sighed with the relief that knowing she could still be reached in once dangerous territory somehow brought her.

"Bulk' we'll eventually be in need of a bridge. Mind standing by?"

"On it. Hey Arcee, where are you?"

"Uh… Bulk', you probably don't wanna know. But I think we've found 'Bee."

"Just a heads up. Knockout is gone too."

"He's with me."

"With you? You're okay with that?" Obviously her hesitation in trusting the newest Autobot, had not gone unnoticed by her team.

She nodded slightly, though of course he could not see her do it. "Yeah, just fine, thanks. Stand by, Bulk'"

Once they had reached the bottom of the badly slopping, and near deadly trail, they found themselves in a field of jagged metallic rock, and smooth rounded stones of sulfur, that crunched under foot. The tiny jagged points of many tiny eroded bits of copper and iron reflected the sun above, as their footfalls and tire treads kicked up the bits that had never been dulled by friction and wear.

"This place is more horrible than I remember it," Knockout said as he rolled along carefully. "It was never nice out here, but never this bad either. Amazing what centuries of war can do to a…"

He stopped speaking and transformed quickly, before standing up and taking a slow careful step forward. He nearly tripped over, as his still not perfectly working foot bumped a larger piece of jagged metal of some kind. He managed to catch himself quickly.

"Arcee," he said, dropping onto his knees on the ground. "We found him."

"'Bee," Arcee cried in a mix of relief and dread as she dropped to her knees nearby. The black and yellow bot was completely powered down, laying awkwardly face up near the bottom of a cliff. Sure enough he must have slipped off the far road, as Knockout had assumed. He was scrapped up and chips of his paint had been peeled from his body, but there was no sign of obvious bleeding. His head rested directly over a large chunk of an iron brick, and Arcee looked at Knockout with dread. She understood at once that such a thing was never a good sign. Knockout was looking up to the top of the cliff, where the road was way out of sight.

"That's a long way to fall," he said, clearly thinking out loud. It had to be at least a hundred meters up. He had already retrieved a scanner from his storage compartment, and carefully held it in his hand while motioning for her to get closer.

"He's lying in a scrap pile at the bottom of a cliff again," Arcee gasped in horror, as she fought back the washer fluid that threatened to leak at once from her optics. The terrible irony of the whole mess was not lost on her, and for the second time in the hour she nearly lost her fuel tank

"He was knocked into power down, but he's alive." Knockout said without looking up. One hand reached behind him to hand her his scanner. "Hold this please."

Taking several long moments to check each limb over. He nodded once and mumbled to himself for a second before, he gently wedged an arm under Bumblebee's head and upper body. Very slowly he lifted him slightly, using his own body to keep his arm steady under the extra weight. Knockout's free hand quickly and swiftly pushed aside the rock, before he just as carefully placed the injured bot flat on the ground. Arcee watched silently, as he located a little maintenance panel on their teammates body, on the left side, where the shoulder met the neck. He clicked it open.

"I can only assume he must have knocked his central processor offline when his head smacked that rock. I'm going to try to reboot it and then we see what happens…. Arcee, keep his head steady, hands on either side. We need to keep him from moving until I can be sure he hasn't damaged or bent the main line through the back of his frame. Any sudden unstable moment with such damage and the line could snap, which would be bad."

Arcee nodded mutely as she moved to follow his direction. Quite strangely in the moment, she found herself thinking about just how similar Knockout seemed to Ratchet, and just how strange it was to see that comparison. Knockout may always have been somewhat of a self-centered coward, and may well have to many, seemed quite laughable as an enemy. But from her own experience, Arcee also knew the just how surprisingly formidable he could be on the enemy side. She had seen him taunt, and threaten Autobots for fun. Even humans had fallen victim, and not just once. His integrated weapons were so obviously designed for far greater use in hacking someone apart, then in actually doing any good.

Yet she saw somehow, the same devotion to his chosen field that she had seen so long in her trusted old teammate, now stationed back on Earth. Bumblebee was among the best of her few good friends, and she realized that without even questioning it, she had entrusted Knockout with his life. She wondered how her new teammate would have done in the capacity of battle field medic. No doubt, he must have done it at some point. The war had gone on and on so long. No doubt he'd hated it if for no other reason other than the amount of mess involved.

"He's survived far worse than this," Arcee said quietly. She needed to assure herself somehow as she looked at her longtime friend and teammate. He was still motionless and silent among the jagged rocks and little bits of his own chipped paint. Arcee knew that as much as she could barely face such a thought, if he were to offline, he would never have wanted this to be the way his light went out. Bee was a warrior, an Autobot. It was the only life he had ever truly known. he would he'd want it to be in the height of battle…. and he'd want to have been winning. A moment of poor judgement, and a resulting accident – that was just not a good enough end to his story.

She saw Knockout nod at her mumbled statement. He turned to look at her, and for a fleeting second she saw a strange expression of compassion that looked so out of place in optics as red as his. Turning away again, he said calmly, "Okay, ready to reboot. Keep a firm hold on him."

"Wh… What's happened?" 'Bee questioned in confusion at the same moment his optics slowly opened, and once again started to shine their bright blue. He tried to turn his head to the right. Arcee kept her hands firmly in place, and for a second he only blinked in confusion. "Why am I on the ground?"

"Bit of a spill. Right off the road and over the cliffs. We need you perfectly still for a minute," Knockout spoke with a calm, firm determination and focus that once again reminded Arcee of Ratchet. "You're probably on top of some rough ground, but I need to do a few checks with you now awake, before I can let you try getting up."

"I'm alright, I'm alright," Bumblebee mumbled in obvious disbelief and bewilderment over his mishap, as Knockout, true to his word made him lay where he was, while he scanned and rescanned him again, and instructed him to gently hold into his fingertips.

"That was completely idiotic of me," 'Bee mumbled, as he pressed the bottoms of his feet against the medic's palms, following directions. "I was just so upset. I don't know what I was thinking. I stopped paying attention to where I was going."

"I think we're all just glad you're alright, 'Bee." Arcee said gently. She moved her hands away from him as soon as she was motioned to do so.

"Everything looks, fine," Knockout said with confidence. "Try sitting up. Than you can probably stand up. Arcee, we might just be ready to call for that bridge."

Arcee called for it immediately, and she could not deny her relief when Bulkhead said he would activate one for them. Caught up in the moments of crisis, she had all but forgotten where she was, but now the knowledge of her location had quickly come back to her.

"Hey 'Bee," she said, gently grabbing her teammate's arm as soon as he was on his feet just fine. She pulled him closer to her, threw her arms around him and whispered more than half seriously, "if you ever drive that recklessly again, I swear to Primus, I'll scrap you."

He just hugged her right back, nodding silently, until the ground bridge opened.

 **Scene break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Knockout stood inside his living quarters, with his ever present rotary buffer in one hand. Bending down, he buffed and rebuffed, what in vehicle form, would become a left rear fender. Finally satisfied with that one, he worked on the right. He stepped back to sit on the edge of his recharge station and lifting a foot, he buffed the top of it for at least a minute, and then switched feet. Anything behind him was much harder to get too, and he was as frustrated as ever at being unsure he hadn't somehow scuffed up a back shoulder panel, and might never know it. Still sitting perched on the edge of the recharge station, he worked at shinning the panels that covered his headlights. In the dark, in vehicle form, he liked to think it was his headlights that showed an expression of his feelings, since his optics were hidden, tucked away under the motor.

Holding the buffer, still running and spinning idly, he looked around his room a bit. He had often considered a little decorating in there, but even after months he simply hadn't done much yet. Cybertronians generally occupied simple homes and spaces yes, but even by the standards of his world, his living space would be considered unfinished. There was the recharge station, tight against one wall and plugged into the power supply. The protective cover over both the frame and padding, were simple the simple light blue standard issue of the Autobot forces. There were a few shelves in the far corner, but they were bare expect for small stack of data pads. All that surrounded him were four dull greyish walls, and a sliding door.

On the day he'd split from the 'cons, eventually fleeing the Nemesis with the Autobots, after the warship had crashed, he'd left behind most of his own belongings. Of course going back later to collect anything was far from an option. Eventually he'd arrived at the Autobot base, almost in a state of silent shock for his own reasons, among a group of new teammates each in complete and utterly shocked states for a reason for their own. And the only things he later realized he had with him were the few things he'd been carrying in his storage compartment.

There was his medical kit, which he was grateful to still have. His energized fighting staff, which never seemed to work properly since the crash had thrown him to the floor with it stored disassembled, in his compartment. The buffer, which was easily replaced, but still one less thing of many to eventually worry about replacing. There were also a couple of random data pads, and he never was sure after the fact, why it was he'd been carrying those in the first place. Both were old fiction novels he'd read before. The rest of the pads on his otherwise empty shelf were his borrowed study material.

He began buffing again, if for no reason other reason than he somehow found the slight vibration against his finish calming, and considered that maybe it really was time to make the place home. Goods were slowly becoming available again on Cybertron, and there were so many things he could hand make or build himself. Looking at the bare wall in front of his recharge station, he thought of acquiring a digital frame to hang there. He'd had two of them onboard the warship, and displayed images of Earth automobiles in them. He thought he might like to find new photos to use again. He smiled thinking that maybe on this base, teammates would not laugh at him for it. He would need an audio player too. Most of the bots had them, and down the hall, Bulkhead's blared that blasted heavy metal for hours on end. He could hardly stand the noise. A new recharge station cover might brighten the place up. He was eager to start replacing his once decent collection of reading material, and probably get ahold of a chair to sit in to read.

A knock at the door made him jump slightly, and he shook his head at just how jumpy he'd become. Berating himself for his reaction to a simple knock, he shut off the buffer, and stood up.

"It isn't locked," he called out, before the door slid open. Bumblebee and Arcee both stepped in to his doorway.

"Is there an emergency?" Knockout questioned at once, and ready to hurry. The only reason he could think of for someone knocking would be a need of him in the medbay. He was ready to step into the hall at once, and wondered why no one had just commed him instead. It might have been quicker, if only slightly.

"No emergency," Arcee said. She chuckled a little. "You missed a spot." She nodded slightly toward the buffer in his hand and grinned.

"Where?" Knockout demanded, lifting first an arm and then more carefully, a leg, trying to see what it was that she had been referring to. "I did?"

"Oooh, Funny," he said after a second his frantic spot checking, and he had realized she was trying to kid around with him. He laughed. It was slowly becoming easier to do that.

"Arcee and I were about to go get some practice in," Bumblebee said. "We thought maybe you'd like to come too."

Curious, and admittedly more than a little bored, Knockout followed them when they walked back out to the hall. Walking behind them, almost keeping up with their faster pace and relieved that they were not actually slowing down much for him, he asked with caution, "what kind of practice are you talking about?"

"Just a little weapons practice," 'Bee answered as he stepped onto the lift that would take them down to the base's lower floor. Arcee stepped on next and knockout followed with some hesitation.

"Weapons practice?" he asked, repeating what he had just heard, and probably quite stupidly at that.

The lift led off directly into the base's large open gym, that the 'bots frequently used. Knockout had seen it only a couple times so far. He'd been shown the place, invited to use it anytime along with the others. He had been down there a couple of times, creeping in when the place was otherwise empty, to practice a little bit with the fighting staff of his. But he was far from a fighter. That and any other of his weapons were never for any actual combat. Oh they had their uses, but he was better at diving for the floor than much else. His tendency to panic and dive away shrieking had always embossed him, but he'd always just hidden it the best he could behind arrogance, and kept running before he was ever truly cornered in battle.

The gym was a huge open space with a mostly empty and lightly padded floor. The far corner was home to a couple of heavy punching bags, which were probably used mostly by Bulkhead. The rest was seemingly just space to kick and spin, to practice rolls and falls and flips. There was one of the simple, and narrow benches that seemed to be the favored model for the base, along part of one side wall. The far well held a pair of closed double doors that led to the blaster range, and Arcee and 'Bee made their way across to those doors, with Knockout still following and wondering if he had lost his mind.

"Blasters?" he questioned, making his disbelief obvious. "Seriously?"

Both Arcee and 'Bee had integrated firearms, but both grabbed one of the small blaster weapons from a little storage rack just outside the door anyway. To Knockout's surprise and while he just stood sputtering what should have been words, she handed him hers and grabbed another one for herself. The room they stepped into was far bigger than he might have guessed it would be. The door closed behind them.

"You'll never do much harm with one of these," Bumblebee said, explained while he checked and rechecked his, before aiming at a far wall add lowering it again. "They've been reformatted, for targeting only. They fire a harmless beam of light. It's flashy, but you'll never blow your own head off."

Knockout had faced them both more than once. He'd retreated maybe too quickly, but still he could not deny how much their skills both impressed and scared him half to death. He backed up a bit, hesitantly still holding the targeting weapon he'd been handed.

"You must have at least aimed a blaster at some point, right?" 'Bee questioned as Arcee hit a switch and the room was suddenly dark and filled with light up flashing and moving images.

Knockout forced a laugh. A forced shrug of arrogance hid his growing concern, or at least he hoped it did. "Well yes. I've messed around with one a bit back in basic training, many of the troops have them and handed them to me, when I used to make it quite clear that firearms had no place in my medical bay… Oh come on, surely you can't expect me to ever out target you."

Arcee laughed, as she aimed at the wall, obviously checking her targeting. She pulled the blaster close to her again and made a couple adjustments, before aiming again. "you'll never outshoot 'Bee. I barely can. Sure a decent and productive way to blow off steam though and we all have some of that to blow off lately."

She fired fast at an expanding light as it popped up from nowhere and moved fast toward her. Three more lights form any random direction and she hit them all, managing to spin herself around once to catch one behind her. One bright blue one that materialized overhead, made her reach up to target it, before a new one showed at the same time right behind her. She dropped her the ground fast, aiming first up and then backward, hitting both in under a second, before rolling sideways to aim for third, low to the floor. And expanding light glided slowly across a far wall and it looked like she would miss in in the midst of getting back to her feet. But she aimed and fired on it, reaching out beside her, balancing in her nearly standing position as though it was nothing. She reached over to the nearby control panel and shut down the flashing targeting lights.

"Yeah, I could never do that…" Knockout said with a nervous laugh at her. "There always was a reason Autobots survived the war, though so badly outnumbered."

"The thing about being outnumbered," Arcee answered, "is that you find yourself in the interesting position of ending up either better than the enemy or probably dead. Without any real exception, every Autobot knows how to shoot, and do it pretty well. Some, like bulkhead, prefer to do their own thing, and it works for them so fair enough. But they can shoot too. We're good. We know we're good. And you just don't stay good by not practicing."

Knockout was not the biggest display of confidence in the room, and he had to admit to himself that it made him uneasy to not be. Even when he was faking it, which he could admit only to himself, was much of the time, at least he was good at his act. He was not in the habit of doing anything that he knew he would not be easily able to at least pretend to be the best at either…. With more hesitation then before he stared at the blaster in his hand and shook his head, stubbornly refusing to make a fool of himself, by missing something that they may well set so that it was not even moving.

"I might just watch you two for a bit," he said, finally setting his weapon down carefully near the door and standing out of the way himself.

Neither of the other two forced the matter and for that he was relieved. He watched as Arcee reset the controls again, and this time she and 'Bee both fired on moving targets. He saw a good number of the lights flashing at them from above, and he had to commend them for the sense that made. So many of their targets in any true battle would have been flying above. He thought back to the sheer numbers of fliers that had always been constantly dumped into his medbay for repairs, back on the warship, and suddenly the numbers added up. He watched as both bots teamed up to hit series of lights that flashed in a row on first one wall then another, and then noticed how clearly they always tended to turn away from each other and aim in opposite directions, each hitting something nearly every time anything moved. They provided a kind of cover for each other with one shooting toward the ceiling constantly while the other took out lights across the wall or floor. Watching the two of them turn, jump and even roll across the floor with a blaster never leaving their hands, Knockout understood how it was teamwork, but at the same time a friendly kind of competition as well.

The set up shut down and Arcee stepped over to read the control panel. She called out loud. "My score, ninety-nine point seven percent accuracy. 'Bee, ninety-nine point six five percent."

"Really," Bumblebee said, shaking his head and laughing. "Well if I must lose by a tiny fraction of a point at least I lost to someone good.

Knockout laughed along with them slightly, but still he was nervous about their remaining level of energy. Scrap, those two were barely even winded. Arcee turned right toward him, and motioned toward his blaster, still laying by his feet. He was sure she was going to scold him for leaving a weapon on the floor like that, because truly he knew better. But she didn't bother with anything more than a slight shake of her head.

"Your turn," she said.

The system had been reset again, and now true to his earlier guess, instead of the flashing and fast motion, it showed expanding lights projected from a wall on the far side of the room. He may never have known what possessed him to think trying such a thing was actually a wise idea but Knockout dared to finally aim the baster and fire at the light. He missed by a mile, the beam from the weapon bouncing off the wrong wall entirely. No laughter met his miscalculation though and he tried it again. He still missed, but at least he had been closer. 'Bee joined him in shooting at a few simple non-moving targets too, probably for no real reason other than to score a perfect hundred percent because he could.

Knockout eventually hit one and then not many tires later he hit it again. He still missed more than he hit, but he did admit if not to anyone else that he was having some fun doing it anyway. He aimed to fire again and missed entirely, shooting at the ceiling in his alarm, when his target slowly moved across the wall. With a shake of his head and an audible cry of dread, he turned to see that Arcee was back at the control panel. Had she set it to move? Even at a slow speed as it was, he had his doubts. Yet still he hit one on the eighth try. Or was it the seventh? When the next one rolled past, he missed again. Arcee stepped up behind him, startling him from his next try at aiming.

"I think I see what your trouble might be," She said. She stood still and held her own weapon out in front of her, arms straight. "See, when you're aiming at anything in motion, you are looking at where that target actually is at the second you fire. Don't think of where it is. Anticipate where it will be by the time the beam reaches it and aim there. Watch."

Five times she aimed ever so slightly off of the targets and five times she hit them dead center. "she went on explaining, with a grin across her faceplates, "the faster it's moving the faster you think and the more off your aim would seem to someone watching you in slow motion."

Knockout dared to try it again, and he managed to hit both of the two he had aimed at. 'Bee grinned and smacked him playfully across his shoulder panels. The three of them all aimed and fired on slow moving targets for a while longer, and Knockout had to admit it really was a decent way too blow off steam.

The door slid open behind them, and Smokescreen walked onto the practice range. He held one of the targeting weapons in his hand, and obviously wanted to get in some of his own practice. He paused a second near the door, and nodded greetings to his teammates.

"Are you trying to teach him to shoot?" he glanced toward Knockout, and looked almost a little too amused.

"Hey he's not bad at it, considering he's still slightly off balance, and hasn't really tried before," Arcee answered quickly. Her attempt at dismissing the kid's obvious doubt about the wisdom of the idea was clear. "Why don't you and 'Bee practice for a while. I'm taking a break."

Knockout followed her as she left the room, partly to stay out of the way - but mostly because, as much as he wanted to deny the fact standing was beginning to become a problem. He made his way to the bench and slowly sat down. Arcee watched him for a minute from across the room. Finally, she walked closer to him.

"You okay?"

"Of course I'm okay," Knockout answered her concern laughing with a typically arrogant grin planted on his face. He spoke with his hands waving a bit for effect. "Well slightly more than okay really. Intelligent, talented… nice and shiny paint."

Arcee gave a look somewhere between near laughter and completely unimpressed. "I meant physically."

"Honestly I fear I might have at least slightly overdone it today. The driving last night was fine of course, but I can't imagine working on the ground did my leg any favors. I barely got enough recharge when we rolled back here with Bumblebee, and then we had too much fun with the blasters."

"I think I may just have pushed you too hard…" Arcee sat down on the bench.

"Well it's not exactly your fault. I push myself to keep up, to be faster than I should be. I've been doing it for days without stopping and that was a bad idea." He felt a sense of great embarrassment, felt inefficient, useless, ridiculous. His optics wandered toward the floor and he held his gaze down, hating the feeling of his own defeat.

"You going back to get in more practice time?" he asked, curious.

She shook her head. "I might get in a couple more rounds later. Right now I think we'll just let those two have their fun. Burn off some of their endless energy. It's easy to forget sometimes, well most of the time, but both of them are almost still kids. And everyone is excited about tomorrow. It'll be nice to see Earth again. It's wonderful to be back here. I think we were all losing hope it would ever be restored. But I'm amazed too, at just how much Earth became our second home."

Arcee had never seemed the chatty type as a rule. Nothing like Smokescreen or Bumblebee, both of whom he knew could easily talk for ages. As he heard her speaking though, and doing it more than usual, he could hear the undeniable excitement in her voice. And he felt a sense of anxiety and great unease creeping up on himself with little warning.

Her voice made him force himself to look back up and meet her gaze again. Her tone was She went on speaking. "The plan is basically that we bridge out as a group, in time to land during what would be late in the morning on the other side. Our human partners will be retrieved by evening, and we will all be together in the old Earth base for a few Earth days. Oh and of course agent Fowler will be around. His office is nearby so... he always was a bit of a hard head to deal with, but maybe June tamed him… I hear they got together. Sorry. You probably have no idea who it is I'm actually even talking about, at least not by name."

Knockout looked at her intently, nodding silently. He tried to speak but he could feel coolant and cleaner fluid backing up behind his optics and he didn't trust himself to make a sound. He fought back emotion and felt his own fear at not understanding it exactly what it was he felt in the first place. He could see her speaking to him still, but didn't hear a word. His processor was filled with the sound of human voices, screaming in defiance through their obvious terror.

The room spun and wavered out of focus, as he fought for control and failed. He was standing on the hard pavement in a small Earth town. He held up a hand to the level of his optics and turned his mouth up into his best menacing snarl, at the feeling the small human's squishy soft, fragile body clutched in his hand and wiggling to struggle free. His anger at the tiny helpless being overwhelmed him. How dare some humans outsmart him or even try. How dare they think they might just beat him. His own sense of inner conflict crept in and he shoved it away in a rage born of arrogance. The human had not done anything wrong. Neither had the one still on the ground screaming at him as though they had forgotten they were tiny helpless and doomed to die should he decide to step on them. He took in the fear, felt the human tremble in his hand, understood the strange somehow delightful mix of anger and sheer terror, in the poor little fleshy brain. He denied his own relief that he knew he should never have felt, when the humans managed to get away. Maybe he didn't have to kill either of them. All he'd really wanted after all was their relic.

"Knockout!" Arcee's voice made him snap back finally to the present. "What's the matter?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," He was mostly lying as the room continued to spin. He saw her as barely a blurred haze of light blue, and her voice echoed in his ears. As did his own. Behind her, where he understood the empty gym should have been, he saw a large expanse of road, and watched in a mix of delighted amusement, and crushing guilt as one as some earth build automobile flew from the edge of the pavement. He saw its tires bounce along the edge. Looked the human driver in the eyes for a second before the car vanished. He'd run that car right off the road. He'd meant to do it. The idiot had deserved it. That would teach him to key his paintjob. 'You scratch my paint, I scratch yours.' He had that coming. No, no he didn't. Oh scrap it all. Nobody had died.

He blinked frantically, shook his head slightly and then more forcefully, trying to force his processor into the present again. The road and the ditch faded out of focus and he was looking back at the gym through blurred optics. His fuel tank was flipping horribly and he fought to make it stop before he lost its contents entirely. He was not on that road anymore. He forced himself to see that. Forced himself to look at the wall behind him somewhere. He felt the sense of his vehicle mode still with his ties on the pavement but sensed at the same time that he was sitting up right with the bench under him. It was still so blurry and his intakes hitched and gasped horribly.

"Please talk to me. Tell me what I can do." He heard Arcee speaking to him again. She sounded clearly worried, unsure, confused. He got his baring faster now, mostly through sheer will power, and found himself resting against her awkwardly, her arms thrown around him and look of terrible uncertainty across her faceplate. He wondered if she had pulled him closer to her like that, or if he had started to fall and had just kind of landed like that while she tried to help. He lifted himself up slowly and then with some urgency, as he realized in shame that he had leaked washer fluid from his optics onto her shoulder panel.

"I'm alright," he said stupidly and knowing it was ridiculous to say that now.

"No. You aren't" She spoke firmly, and refused to let him off the bench though he tried to jump up fast. He wanted to run for it, and she must have known it. He said nothing. The fact was that he didn't know what to say or how to say it. She wanted to know what was wrong, what had just happened, and the true concern that made her want to know. But just the feeling of someone's concern for him, the compassion of another being, was making him uneasy all over again. He feared that the room might start to vanish again. He feared falling back into his own memories and feared that just speaking of any of it would only make it worse, and even more real.

"Do you even want to go with us tomorrow?" Arcee questioned. She was speaking slow and quiet. He recognized understanding. That question was safer. No one had ever outright asked him before. It had simply been assumed, or at least never acknowledged. He sensed that she had just realized that herself.

"I… don't know." He said.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes/ Shorter chapter this time. I know many people, (including me) prefer to read longer chapters in fanfictions. I hope to start doing some longer ones. But this one ended where I thought the flow worked best for it. I'm glad people seem to like the direction I'm taking poor Knockout's state in. Of course in the series, he was also just over the top arrogance and snappy comments to anything, and even when he switched sides, he did it with his usual flare. But of course that's also basically a kids show that just happens to have a large enough number of adult fans. Though this would never have made sense in the TV series, I can easily imagine that Knockout would have at some point looked for a good place to run off to and cry his optics out in confusion at least once.**

 **There will be more anxiety and guilt type stuff coming up again in later chapters as well, so maybe I should give a warning in case that kind of thing is a triggering issue some anyone. This will also get a bit darker in parts later on.**

 **Humans in this chapter! A good bit of it is interaction between, and with the humans. So lots of dialogue, lots of banter and silliness, but it was fun to write this one.**

 **Heeeeeyyy… I actually have a tiny little favor to ask of any readers as well, since I know some readers are also writers. My word software is about to expire next week, and I don't want to end up paying to renew it. I have another which is freeware, but not compatible with . Grrrrrr. If anyone knows of a free downloadable and legal program which is also compatible, so I can still post, please, please, let me know?**

The swirling bluish vertex of the space bridge spun in front of them and slowly each of the bots stepped through. The two wreckers disappeared first, vanishing into the glow of interdimensional space. Smokescreen followed behind them. Arcee walked toward the bridge next, with Knockout close beside her. He carried a small stack of data pads in his hands.

"Hey, Arcee…" he said speaking quietly as the first few disappeared into the space bridge. He stopped both walking and speaking, and waited until she stopped too. "You didn't tell anyone, did you? About… "

"Yesterday?" she shook her head, but looked at them seriously. "No I didn't. But I think you should. While we're back on Earth you'll have a good chance to talk to Ratchet…"

"No, no, no," Knockout shook his head hard, and steadied a hand on the pads trying not to drop the whole stack. "Probably bad enough having one bot thinking I've lost my mind."

"I don't think you've lost your mind. I do think there might be something wrong though, and I think he could help you. He's been in the field longer than either of us has lived. Seriously from my perspective last night things got a bit scary. You were just kind of staring at nothing for several minutes. I don't think you could see me, hear me. Even when I pulled you toward me, you didn't notice. I know I probably shouldn't have done that, but I had no idea what to do."

Bumblebee hurried out of the hallway that led away from his living quarters and walked toward the bridge. He paused near the two others for a second. "You two coming?"

"Run ahead 'Bee," Arcee said quickly gesturing toward the space bridge. "We'll catch up in a minute."

"See you both on the other side," 'Bee called back as he ran though the bridge and disappeared from view.

"If whatever the frag it was that happened last night ever happens again, please promise you will talk to Ratchet," Arcee said when her other teammate was long gone. "Or at least talk to me, even if I'm not exactly helpful with this. Autobots would never want to see a teammate suffer alone."

She relieved when Knockout nodded, however hesitantly.

"So, what's with the data pads?" she asked him.

"This is the study material I've been reading over. I'm finished all this, and hoped to borrow a few more pads to review."

"You've read all that?" Arcee was both impressed and surprised. She berated herself silently for wondering at the fact that he clearly enjoyed studying and reading. She wondered silently why exactly it was that she was always so surprised to see that he was smart and driven toward success. She asked herself why that could not or should not be the case, and knew there was no answer to that.

"Ready?" She asked, stepping toward the bridge.

He nodded slowly, again with obvious hesitation and doubt. "I never did get used to space bridging."

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Agent Fowler and June sat on a sofa, against the wall a ways back from the railing that surrounded the upper walkway surrounding the inside of the base. Fowler had left his office on the other side of the upper level, to join her when she'd shown up five minutes before. June reached into the plastic bag she'd set down on the coffee table in front of them.

"I grabbed us some lunch from that sandwich shop over on sixteenth." She handed him a wax paper wrapped package. "You're usual roast beef, extra cheese and tomato. If they put too much mayo on these again I swear this time I'm calling to complain. Remember, last time we both wore it on our laps when we ate on their patio." She opened her ham and swiss and rolled her eyes. "Oh, Bill, Jack had some good news today. He finally got a new after school job."

"Nice. I know he wanted one since his old one in Jasper kind of blew up. Where's he working?"

"Sloppy burger down on James street. Another drive thru job. He's good at that. Hey he's been talking more about maybe going into the air force after high school. I told him to ask you about it. Maybe you can grab him some recruiting information?"

Fowler took a bite of his sandwich, dropped mayonnaise on his brand new tie and frowned. "He did. It's in the mail. He and I talked a bit last night when I stopped by the house. He says he's looking at buying a motorcycle. I guess it's a bit older but he thinks he'll fix it up nice. I promised I'd discuss it with his mother."

"Bill. I don't want Jack riding a motorcycle!"

Fowler shrugged, while he tried to wipe mayonnaise off the top of the table with a napkin from the bag. "He rode on Arcee, and he was fine. We need to find a new favorite sandwich place, June. Again with the mayonnaise. Second time this week."

"Yes, but Arcee drove. Not Jack. She's an Autobot soldier. He's a teenage human who can get distracted on the highway and wreck. I'm going to the manager of that diner later. What a mess. This is worse than last time."

"Please tell me I don't need to worry about you two humans up there, dropping any of that apparently far too messy sandwich condiment on my control board!" Ratchet griped from his place at his work station on the level below. He turned quick to glance over the railing at his optic level, with a less than impressed look on his metal faceplate.

"No problem agent bot," Fowler said chuckling a little. "Our mess is nowhere near the edge."

"Well it had certainly better not be." Ratchet warned, waving an arm in the air. "Please clean up later with some good detergent. I need a sticky mess around here about as much as any bot needs a scraplet in the cooling fan. And don't call me agent bot!"

"Someone sure has a kink in his tail pipe today," June whispered. She stifled her laughter with a hand clamped over her mouth.

"I heard that!" Ratchet exclaimed, waving a finger over the railing, before he turned back around again to work.

"As the kids seem to be saying these days, I think you're busted," Fowler whispered back, before he finished his sandwich. The Autobot made a clear point of tuning out both of them, and tapped away on his huge control panel below, still grumbling.

"Bill, we need to have a talk before the bots get back here, and then the kids are picked up," June's tone was far more serious now, as picked up the wrappers and cleaned up. "This military type stuff and the deal with the bots is not is not really my thing. I'm just a mom that kind of fell into all this because my kid made a friend that turned out to be a fifteen-foot-tall transforming alien robot. But what exactly is the deal with that 'con?"

Fowler laughed a little, confused. "Can you be more specific? Which one?"

"I don't know which one it is," June grew more than a little frustrated. She knew she should have asked about that whole matter much sooner, but just how did one address such a thing? "I guess some Decepticon is now siding with the 'bots, or at least claiming to be. Now I know it's a war and I know once in a while in war someone will defect and might switch factions… hey if it works out then great for that 'con, right. But they are bringing him back here?"

"Apparently so. Listen, June, the bots know what they're doing. They wouldn't bring a former 'con with them if they thought he'd endanger us, them, or anyone else."

"I just don't know what to think about any of the kids, or myself for that matter casually being around a Decepticon. These are the bad guys, remember. The Autobots are the good guys."

"Well basically, yes. But, the 'bot troops believe in the right to redemption. They claim he seeks his chance."

"Is it anyone we know?" June asked the question, unsure if she wanted the answer to be yes or no. She wondered which would make it seem safer.

"Possibly." Fowler put an arm around her and pulled to close to him. "I don't know many of them by name. He was one of the higher ups. An officer of some sort. Head of medical or something. I know he's red, and transforms into a ground based vehicle. Some kind of sports car. It's quite impressive in my opinion. This was a high up ranked officer, with a future. Gave it all up and ran with nothing. They're not so different from us humans in so many ways…"

"Bill," June cried in alarm. She grabbed his arm to make him stop talking and listen. "A red sports car 'con? Oh god. He's the one that went out for a joy ride all over the county with us stuffed in his trunk! He wanted to take us to Megatron. We might be dead right now if communication hadn't gone down. He almost killed Jack at least twice."

The sound of Ratchet's huge metal feet moving toward them with a slight vibration of the floor made them both stand up to approach the railing. Ratchet spoke to them both seriously as ever, but without any of the earlier cranky edge left in his voice.

"I feel I may well owe you both an apology. I should have said more, far sooner. Yet I did not. The former Decepticon is named Knockout. Yes, he was indeed responsible for several incidents, including the one you mentioned. I believe he's truly and honestly on his own road to the redemption a great leader once taught all Autobots to believe in the right to. Recently I was called on to repair him after he was severely damaged in the collapse of a building under construction on Cybertron. It later came to light that he had been tapped in there trying to let Autobots escape after the site was bombed by a 'con flier out to settle scores. I had a considerable hand in convincing the rest of them to trust him, and if I'm wrong about this, I will find myself forever living with my mistaken judgment. But I don't believe he's dangerous."

"Think we can trust him?" June questioned, turning to Fowler. He said nothing.

"I was back on Cybertron, my home planet, for several days taking care of this badly injured former 'con," Ratchet said, when the humans stayed silent, thinking. "He's as terrified as any of us might be, human or bot. It takes nerve to walk away like he did, and even more to keep going, to still insist you did the right thing, when your former friends try to kill you for it."

Both of the humans on the second level of the base, might have taken another moment or much more, to think everything over and take it all in. But there was simply no time to. A comm link bleeped below, and a monitor flashed an alert.

"Incoming space bridge connection," Ratchet said. He gestured toward the far wall, and sure enough a swirling vertex appeared near where he was pointing. The old Autobot took a head count and spook out loud as each of his teammates hurried through into the Earth base. "Bulkhead, Wheeljack, Smokescreen, Bumblebee. Welcome back."

"Two more were still behind me," 'Bee explained. "I ran ahead. It looks like they needed a minute." He waved with enthusiasm at the humans above on the second level. The three other 'bots nodded their own greetings quietly.

"Bumblebee, you get bridged to New Mexico. Bulkhead, you get bridged all the way to Japan," Ratchet explained with a more cheerful air than was common for him. "When the others come over, we can close the space bridge and open ground bridges. You first Bulk. You'll need a while. You'll be stuck in Tokyo traffic."

As Bulkhead gave a single quick nod of understanding, Arcee stepped out of the bridge and into the base. Knockout followed closely behind her.

"June!" Arcee exclaimed. She raced over to the railing in a few long paces.

"Hi Arcee. Jack is coming by after school. He's writing a midterm. How was your… err… walk through time and space…?"

The bot laughed. "Uneventful. Actually when bridging it just feels basically like walking through a doorway. Nothing much to tell about the trip over."

"How's Cybertron?"

Arcee started to answer, going into some complex information about endless construction and the numbers of returning refugees, the rebuilding of roads, a plan for a new center of higher learning.

June listened with interest, but her attention was quickly pulled away by the red bot that stood in the middle of the lower level. His optics glanced around the place, and finally drifted up to the railing. The human staring back knew bots well enough to know their still amazingly human like expressions. And his looked entirely awkward if nothing else. Still the red optics caught her gaze and she stared back, shuddering for a movement at least as she remembered the feeling of his cold metal fingers wrapped tightly around her waist, holding her suspended meters in the air. The red bot smiled slightly, a slight nervous grin of a child caught with a hand jammed into the cookie jar minutes before suppertime. Those once terrifying red optics moved to the floor. June thought back to those optics glaring down at her in the train yard, his stomping heavy feet pounding against the ground as she cowered beneath a boxcar, and her eyes finally looking up to him, bending down snarling in triumph.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Traffic anywhere in and near Tokyo had been worse than usual. The sun had not yet risen when Miko left home to find Bulkhead at the far end of her crowded apartment complex. But even given the early hour, the main streets of the city were overrun with cars and tour busses, transport trucks, and the air filled with the typical constant blasting of horns. Bridging from inside the city would have been ridiculous, and just a flat out bad idea. So the plan was to make it through that mess and call the bridge from a backroad somewhere outside the city.

Miko had barely slept at all, confirming her cover story with Fowler of a class trip to another city, and finally starting her packing last minute. Then she'd gone after a couple hours of lying awake to meet up with her 'bot. She spent a good bit of the long slow commute across the barely drivable city, lightly dozing in Bulkheads backseat.

After an hour or so of napping, she jumped up fast, nearly smacked her head on the roof, and leaped over the seat to land up front hard. Her feet nearly took out an overhead light in the process and the backpack she had thrown up there ahead of her, hit the floor of the jeep with a hand thump. The endless traffic had died out and the tall buildings and lights had given way to lower structures and suburbs sprawling with small houses on narrow streets. She sat behind the wheel and put her seatbelt on.

"I missed you Bulk'" She said, hugging his steering while for a moment, until he turned a corner and made her learn too far to the left.

"I missed you too Miko. But like we always said, just a space bridge way, right?" Bulkhead's voce come from somewhere inside his stereo system. "You are bigger."

"Taller maybe. Hey… you're twenty-five feet tall, Bulk'. How would you notice like two inches?"

"I dunno."

Miko reached for her pack and dug through it, until she found her make-up compact. She looked around the inside of the jeep, and then looked again, flipping down the visor in front of her, then the other one. "I never noticed, Bulk'. Your vehicle form has no mirrors."

"Hmm… I didn't notice either."

She thought of using his rearview to put her make up on, but she knew he used both that and the side mirrors on the doors, to navigate. She settled for the tiny mirror inside the compact and got busy between small bumps against the pavement under the jeep.

"Did you always paint your face like that?" Bulk was watching her put on eye liner and lip-gloss.

"Nope. But now I kinda like it."

"You look different. I forgot how much humans change so fast."

Miko looked at her reflection in the tiny compact mirror, and saw herself as he must have seen her, different after months away. Her hair was shorter now. She'd decided a month before to cut it into shorter layers, and she loved it. The pink was long gone. Perfectly fine for her last school in America, but a code violation in her new one back home. Her clothing over the past months what slowly evolved to, from the old look of t-shirts skirts and leggings, to fitted jeans, button downs and jackets.

"Yeah, Bulk', I guess I do. Hey, can we stop at a store quick?"

"A store?"

"Yeah, the grocery store. There's one just west of here I think. Turn left at that stop sign."

"Okay."

"Soooo…. How's Cybertron? Construction nearly done yet? Anyone coming back home? Met any pretty bot girls yet? Gonna settle down with a couple of cute little metal babies one day now that your home is back…. Hmmm…. Do Cybertronians even have babies? Bulk'! Bulkhead!"

"Yeah Miko?" Bulkhead had been listening to her endless string of questions, not bothering to answer because there was no time between to do so. But her voice had changed from excited questing to urgent yelling and that got his attention.

"You're driving on the wrong side of the road!"

Bulkhead had turned onto the wrong side of the street when he'd made his left turn. He quickly steered to the other side as an oncoming tour bus blasted its horn.

"Sorry. Usually when I drive on Earth, I drive in America." That was the second time Bulkhead had done that that morning. He was only thankful Miko had not been picked up yet the first time.

Miko ran into the store, trying to be fast, and when she got back Bulkhead was parked facing the other way. His hood faced a road still under construction, and on either side of that was nothing but a partly dug up grassy field and a couple of parked and unmanned backhoes. She knew he must have been considering bridging from there and nodded her agreement to his unspoken plan as she leapt back into the front seat. She tossed her just purchased bag of goodies on top of her backpack, opened a fizzy drink she had grabbed for herself, and finally thought to plug in her ipod and crank up some power metal over the stereo speakers.

"I love this song!" Bulkhead yelled. Just like old times. Miko laughed.

"Me too. Hey Bulk', I got a bunch of new music too. Let me play you some new stuff."

"Nice," The Autobot said as he drove toward the construction zone and prepared to call for a bridge over the sound of banging drums. "Lovin' the guitar riffs in this one."

"I can almost play this on mine." Miko had been putting much more time into her music, getting serious about playing both guitar and keyboard, since the 'bots had left Earth.

"Haha, I still listen to that nice collection you sent me home with. Maybe I can add some new ones. It's fun to just crank it up in my room in the base while I work out in there. Most of the others don't mind it much. Trouble is my neighbor is Knockout and he doesn't call this music. He's started bangin' on the wall. Now if only I coulda ended up next to Smokescreen or Wheeljack. They're both cool like us about that kinda thing. Ah well…"

Miko nearly spat her drink over his windshield as she listened to him ramble on. "Wait Bulk'. Sorry? Knockout?"

"Yep. I guess he's just not a metal head."

"Knockout, the 'cons' medic? Like evil version of Ratchet, street racing worst nightmare, terrorizing Autobots 'cause he can?"

"He's an Autobot now. Well kinda. It not official yet."

"What? Bulkhead!"

"I told you about him once in a text message from Cybertron."

"Bulk, seriously? I assumed you were joking!"

"We thought he was joking once,"

"Wh… what…? Miko had never forgotten the day she had heard Knockout declare he was joining the 'winning team,' seconds before she knocked him to the floor in the apex armor. She'd laughed about it to herself later and not given the matter much more thought.

 **More little notes/ Okay I don't know a lot about Japan. As much as I would love to travel the world, and Tokyo is definitely on the list of must see cities, I can't say I know a pile about the place. I hope I didn't make it sound too much like an American city. I know it's huge and crowded, so I could only assume the traffic would be horrendous. I'm pretty sure they drive on the opposite side of the road… Oh wow I hope I didn't get that bit wrong. I really liked putting in Bulkhead's silly mistake.**

 **The sandwich thing is loosely based on one place near where I live, that actually does have a constant problem with the mayonnaise. Either waaaaaay too much or barely any. I was just discussing the place yesterday with someone who was complaining about mayonnaise and I ended up sticking it in because it was funny. Plus, dripping mayo is a perfect reason to get Ratchet complaining…**


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes/ Thanks for the info on the writing and editing software. Problem solved now, and of course I plan to keep writing this. Haha, I thought about naming chapters, too. But I'm so terrible with titles…**

 **Honestly I'm not completely happy with this chapter or the last one. But I'm trying to move this into a certain direction, and it will take a bit to get it there and stay have it all make any sense without missing a pile of needed detail. I know exactly how this ends (I'll never tell! Haha.) Getting there is the hard part.**

Jack pulled into the base on his ten speed. He hopped off and pushed the bike, still gliding forward, against the closest wall. His music was blasting over his earbuds, and he turned it off, shoving the MP3 device into his backpack, just as soon as he had slid that off his shoulders. Seeing the place far emptier than he had expected it to be, and hiding his disappointment at that, he hurried up the metal stairs to the upper level of the base. His pack swung from one hand.

Both his mother and Agent Fowler sat on the sofa near the far wall, across from Fowler's office. He flopped down into the aim chair across from them. He dug through his pack and pulled out a small handful of envelopes, which he passed to his mother over the coffee table.

"I rode by the house and picked up the mail. Hmm, I think it's just bills and junk mail."

June flipped through the small pile in her hand. "Utilities bill. Internet bill. Fast food coupons. Grocery store flier. Hmmm… look at that. I could save fifteen percent on my car insurance. Thanks for the grabbing the mail."

"No problem. So, where is everyone? They should be here by now, right?"

"Two bots are out doing pick-ups." Fowler explained. "One should be rolling in any second. Another is stuck in traffic across the world. The rest of them are around here somewhere. Out back I think. Something about having a look at some of Ratchet's old projects stored in the big shed."

"Cool. So..." Jack paused before he went on speaking, "The 'bots' newest ally… I don't think I understand most of the deal with that. Centuries old, planet destroying wars get complicated, yeah. I just know the little I've heard from Ratchet, but they are actually bringing this 'con with them? Back here, to Earth?"

"That's all true, yes," Fowler answered. "He's under the protection of the Autobots. I would think he's probably safer here than left behind."

"For the record," June put in, frowning, "I still don't like this one slight bit."

"I'm not too hot on the idea myself," Fowler said, moving to sit closer to her. "But like I said, they know what they're doing. Anyways he's hardly the first on Cybertron to change sides. It does happen."

"Ratchet says he was the 'cons medical officer..." Jack stated. He was still not sure what to think of the whole matter, but he had always leaned more toward mistrust than anything else. "Apparently we've met..."

"Yes and today we met again, and I was not happy about it," June grumbled. She pointed a finger at her son and her face took on a certain look that it seemed only a mother could give. "Jack, you be careful. I raised you to be polite and I would hardly tell you otherwise now, but don't ever let yourself end up near him alone and don't get within his arms-reach. I'll most definitely be giving Miko and Raf the very same warning later."

"Mom, what did he look like. I mean is he okay and stuff?" Jack was no happier than his mother was, but still he couldn't help but be concerned anyway. He knew the bots were as emotionally complex as any human, and it did stand to reason that the situation would have been a bit of a messy one.

"He looked… less threatening," his mother's answer was hesitant, but it was obvious she was trying hard to give the truthful response as well. "Just kind of stared at the floor for a while until one of the bots led him out of the base with them. I think he recognized me. He's quiet so far. The eyes though… or I guess optics? I will never feel safe around red ones. Jack, I mean it. Be careful."

The sound of multiple huge heavy footsteps across on the other side of the pair of back sliding doors, made Jack leap to his feet, in under a second. He watched as most of the bots hurried in. He was quick to greet Arcee, who had all but run to the railing to say hello. Smokescreen improvised a high five, by holding up a fingertip. He listened for a bit as Arcee told him all about the base on Cybertron. Apparently it was much bigger than the one they stood in at that moment. He listened with interest as she explained how it had partly survived the war with minor damage, and had once been an education center.

A known and familiar, but now entirely out of place red painted bot, drew his attention away from his partner's explanations. Jack eyed him with growing nervousness, as he made his way closer to the railing. The bot looked over the rail with a curious look about him. Clearly he was intrigued by the human friendly set up.

Arcee stood looking from the red bot to her human partner and back again. With a tone far more awkward than the confidant Autobot typically showed, she said, "I believe the two have already met."

Jack wanted little more than to reach for the closest human sized metal object and either hit the 'con with the thing or throw it toward his optics. But no suitable objects were stored nearby, and within reach. He settled for standing for at least half a minute, glaring at him, with his best 'you just try and touch me,' look in his eyes. Knockout backed up a small step, and Jack fought back the urge to taunt him for being scared of some human. He kept glaring another moment, letting his eyes narrow more and more.

"We've met," he mumbled. His mother was right though. This bot hardly looked so threatening anymore. Quiet too. With the all the glaring at him, the bot had never said a thing. Slowly he lowered his optics to look at the floor. Jack turned away, walked back to flop down in the armchair, and finally wondered if he should almost feel bad about his obvious rudeness.

A screech of tires made everyone in the place look toward the open garage door at the far side of the base. Jack laughed as Bumblebee skidded to a stop, sliding sideways on the smooth floor. Last he remembered it had always been Smokescreen that slid and skidded.

'Bee transformed into his bot mode, just as soon as Raf had hopped out of his passenger seat. Both the boy and the bot stood for a moment, grinning and waving. 'Bee carried little Raf, sitting on the palm of his hand so that he could greet each of the bots, most of them crowding in a bit to say their hellos. Jack watched with growing dread, unsure what might happen as 'Bee turned to the right, obviously intending to step closer to place Raf over the railing. The black and yellow Autobot came face to face with the 'con medic, who was only standing off the side of the group, still staring at the floor. Jack watched, prepared to start thinking fast, as Knockout looked up quick, and then stepped backwards, out of the way.

"H… hello," Raf said, from his place in his bot partner's hand, greeting him just like he had the rest of them. The kid's uncertainty about this bot was clear. But still, just the thought of trying to be nice was so typical of him.

"Hello," Knockout answered, the first he'd actually said a word since everyone had arrived.

"'Bee said you… h…hurt yourself," Raf said. He actually sounded concerned about the fact. "You… broke your leg?"

"That would be putting it simply, but yes."

It was clear from the momentary look of focus on the kid's face that the tiny genius was busy estimating just how great the force of impact must have been to cause such damage to a bot. He cringed for a second, before asking, now slightly less nervously, "is it all better now? Ratchet's always said a Cybertronian heals faster than a human."

Knockout only nodded without saying anything, as 'Bee lifted Raf over the railing.

Bulkhead roared into the base, heavy metal blasting over his speakers load enough to fill the whole base. Both his front windows were down and Miko sat with her hands on the wheel, pretending to drive while she banged one hand on the dash in time to a drum solo. She hauled out an overstuffed blue backpack and a plastic grocery bag, and stepped back to let Bulkhead transform. She raced up the metal steps to the upper level two at a time, flopped down onto the middle of the carpeted floor, beside the video game console, and proceeded to hand out Japanese candy and fizzy flavored drinks she had brought for Raf and Jack. She had little wrapped pastries for Fowler and June too.

"I can't read this," Jack laughed. He looked at a package he had been offered. "Looks good though. Thanks Miko."

Raf nodded a thanks while he struggled with a wrapper. He pointed to the label on the package Jack was holding. "I think that says… hmmm…. Something like… fruit crunchy…. chocolate?" He looked at Miko for confirmation.

"You practice reading when we aren't messaging online I guess," she said back.

"Of course I do. And Japanese is not so different than learning Cybertronian. New writing system, a ton of words, and…. Go. I figure you learned English. So did the bots. It made learning languages seem cool."

"And useful," Jack said. As he so often did, he felt a bit dumb next to his small genius friend. He made himself remember that Raf could not kick a soccer ball for anything, while he wished he'd spent more time paying attention in Spanish class.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Miko was wide awake at roughly twenty after three in the morning. Staring in disbelief at the time displayed on her cellphone, she groaned and flopped back down onto the roll away cot she had been sleeping on. She was somewhat tired, and she felt like she should have been able to sleep without trouble. But it seemed her body and brain were also insistent on tell her it was early afternoon. She flipped herself over, buried her face in the pillow and groaned again. She hated time zones!

She sat up on the little bed after half an hour of trying to sleep again. It was no use and she knew that getting fed up would only make it worse. She checked her phone again, smiled at finding a working wi-fi signal, and spent a short while browsing through a few websites of slight interest, checking emails, and commenting on friends' social media. She was not a huge internet user though, social media was just not that amusing to her, and she got few useful emails. She grew bored of that quickly. Still wearing a fuzzy fleece par of polka-dot pajamas, and bare foot, she moved away from her bed and wandered off into the dimly lit base.

The roll away that Agent Fowler had managed to track down for her, had been shoved against the wall, inside a mostly empty and tiny storage room, on the bottom level of the base's main room. Creeping out of the closet, she found herself looking at the huge monitor screens, glowing dimply in power saver mode, and the few overhead lights that stayed on all night long. Miko had never been in the Autobot base overnight before. In the dimness, Ratchet's computer system looked even bigger than it seemed in daylight. The railing overhead seemed much higher than she had thought it was, and a reflection from a light above shone from the metal slightly.

She knew both the boys were asleep on inflatable mattresses they had brought along, near the wall in the 'human area' upstairs. And she could only assume the bots were all asleep, or as they would have put it, in recharge, each inside their former living quarters down a hallway to the right. She remembered seeing inside some of the rooms more than once. She remembered that it reminded her somewhat of most rooms in Japan. Neat, simple, functional. Minimalist, peaceful. Of course the bots' spaces were much bigger than her own at home, and what she would have called a bed for lack of a better term, was plugged into a power source. She grabbed a glass from a cupboard in the small kitchen area, and seeing just well enough under the dim overhead lighting, she got herself some water from the cooler in the corner. She checked the little clock hanging in the kitchen. Just about four in the morning, and still wide awake.

Miko knew it would be a while before either of the boys and likely the bots as well, were up for the day. Everyone had been up late the night before, talking, laughing and catching up on months of everything they had missed of each other's lives. She listened to the sounds of the sleeping base. A heater banging and clanging somewhere, a water pipe rattling slightly, the settling of the floor. Another sound got her attention through the slight banging and rattling. She turned toward the hallway to listen. She could hear footsteps. Large heavy metallic ones. She chuckled to herself a little as she considered a huge Autobot obviously trying their best to be quiet while awake in the night themselves. Miko set the now empty glass down on the little counter and hurried to the hallway. She wondered if it might be Bulkhead that was up early, but dismissed the thought with another laugh. He could never be that quiet with his big clumsy feet.

She walked through the hall, until she came to an open door and a light glowing at full brightness inside. She found herself at the door of what she knew had once been the bots' medical bay. Across the big room and through another big door, she knew there was a room that Ratchet used as a kind of office. The bright light was on in there. Miko crept through the medbay and toward the office door. It had always been hit or miss with the old doc-bot. But she knew Ratchet may bother to talk to her if he was in the mood to deal with human that morning.

"Ratchet," Miko called, speaking quietly so as not to wake the entire base. "Are you busy in here?"

She peeked around the door and then stepped into the doorway. The small human took a step into the room, but quickly stepped back again with a gasp of shock. She stood frozen, deciding what to do. She had assumed that Ratchet would be hiding out in his own office, but instead he was nowhere to be seen and she had found the 'con defector. Knockout had disappeared from the group many hours before and wandered off somewhere. She had eventually just forgotten to worry about where he might be.

Knockout was sitting in front of the work table, on a bot-sized chair, with a data pad in his hands. He'd obviously started reading something. But he looked up when he heard her speaking. Miko backed away another step, and for a second she wondered exactly what she should do. Thoughts and conflicting possibilities ran through her head quickly. She could turn tail and run out of there fast. But then she knew if he wanted to, he would easily catch and grab her. Even with a still slightly bad leg, a twenty foot Cybertronian was far faster than a five-foot human. Of course maybe he had no interest in chasing and scaring her, and maybe her running would only offend him. She was surprised that she actually cared about that. Jack didn't like him. Raf was clearly nervous. June Darby, had warned her to be careful. To stay well away from that bot. Just replaying that warning over in her head made her step forward again, if only slightly at first.

"Sorry, I thought you were Ratchet," she said, taking another step, and then a couple more, far quicker. "Are you busy then?"

Knockout appeared momentarily surprised. He shook his head slightly but said nothing. Miko made her way closer, slower again. She watched his hands. They still held his data pad, resting in front of him. She kept her an eye on him as she chanced one more step.

"Do you suspect I'm going to grab you, fleshy?" Knockout actually laughed slightly.

"Nah," Miko said. Her need to worry about that disappeared, and she laughed too. "Besides if you did, Bulk' would kick your tailpipe, and you know it."

She got another slight chuckle in response and stepped closer, until she was standing nearly at the red bot's feet. She looked up way over her head, to see him set the pad down and tilt his head down to look at her. Miko backed up a few steps again, not because she felt too close, but because their extreme height difference made it hard to comfortably look at each other. It had never worked well with Bulkhead, and it could never work with this one either. She finally ended up flopping down to sit on the floor of the office, a couple of meters from his right foot, looking up.

"What ya workin' on?" she questioned, curious.

"Studying medical and science texts."

"Boring!"

"I don't think it's boring at all. Both are most interesting subjects."

Miko shrugged. "I guess it can be. I worked hard on a science fair project last year. It was quite neat, and I got a B+ on it. Best grade I ever got on anything!"

"I always thought you were quite a smart little human. I can't think of many others aside from you and your friends, that would ever try to fight 'cons. I know that far fewer still would assume they might win."

"Well thanks…. I guess." Miko shrugged again, this time with greater enthusiasm. "What can I say. I guess I'm good at thinking on my feet."

"You'd make a good Autobot."

"Ha! I'm already an honorary wrecker!"

"You're called Miko, correct?"

The human nodded, before she dared to smirk at him. "I would have guessed you were always too busy trying to destroy us, to learn our names."

"Believe me, knowing who's who can be a benefit," Knockout commented, still looking down at her.

MIko got to her feet, and kept looking right up. She said with sincerity, "hey, sorry for the whole punching you so hard I knocked you to the floor thing. I was talking to Bulk' in Tokyo traffic. Apparently you might have been serious about wanting to join the winning team."

Knockout gave a slight laugh, and looked past her, to the floor. Miko could see the flash of a shameful expression over his faceplates, before he hid it well behind another nervous chuckle. "Well I can hardly say it was undeserved. Sadly, I think I started it."

The human girl stepped closer to the bot again. "Hey, can I get a lift up?"

Knockout only stared down at her confused for a moment. He gave first a baffled and then a surprised look. "You want me to pick you up?"

"Yeah. I could climb up, but it's less work just to ask a big bot for help."

With obvious hesitation, Knockout leaned down and lowered a hand. Miko found that his hands were smaller than some of the bots' but she fit just well enough to sit safely in his palm, as long as she kept a grip on one of the fingertips. She scrambled off again and sat on the top of the work table, leaning against a powered down monitor. Knockout laughed as Miko pretended to stretch before leaning back and looking up, now only slightly. The bot turned toward the work table and sat with his head resting propped on his bent arm. The two were finally eye to optic.

"Hey, Doc Knock, can I ask you something important?" Miko questioned, carefully. The red bot nodded silently laughing slightly over the nickname she'd given him.

The human leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands, studying his strange red optics. "I know you didn't put me in that container. That was Starscream's doing. But why'd you hold and carry the container?" She shivered at the memory, but went on looking at him anyway. She wanted to know. Wanted it all to make sense.

"Because he told me to," Knockout answered. His tone indicated that the answer should have been the most obvious thing ever. But to her it wasn't so simple.

"That's it?" she asked. She didn't bother to hide his disbelief and confusion over it. "He told you to, so you did?"

"That suddenly sounds so much worse when I say it out loud, doesn't it?" The bot paused for at least a minute, and Miko saw the look in his optics shift from one of confidence in his answer, to one of confusion, and then sadness. All the while he appeared thoughtful. "The fact is; it gets a little too easy to follow orders when you've done so for too long."

"You traded me for one of the omega keys! I'm a person. I thought was going to die that day. And worse, I thought poor Bulkhead would be made to see it all and die trying to save me." Miko brushed a hand over her eyes fast, to rid herself of a threatening tear and stared at him with a blank look, waiting to hear more.

"I truly am sorry for that day," the red bot said, never breaking eye contact with her.

"I believe you," Miko answered. Oddly, she really did believe him.

"I know that sorry hardly changes anything someone had done…"

The little human sat on the work table, looking the bot in the optics. "I think it can…" She shook her head and rolled her eyes slightly. "That is just so not how I wanted to first see Cybertron."

Knockout grinned at her. A real smile, instead of the arrogant smirk she had seen on his face many times before while he was on the wrong side. "Maybe you will see it again someday. It looks so much prettier now."

 **Notes/ yeah, Miko logic indeed! The group mother figure warns her to never do a very specific thing. Of course that suddenly makes the very thing a much better idea!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes/ This chapter is quite a bit more intense and serious than I had planned on, but I'm pleased with it. I do feel like I better post a slight warning though for anxiety and panic triggers again. Also slight violence. This is an important chapter, intended to lead the plot forward, but it's also sad, and hopefully not somewhat horrifying. Just saying.**

 **I have a couple of reviewers who have reviewed pretty well every new chapter so far. Thanks! That's amazing!**

 **Now here's hoping my formatting works out…**

 _Knockout half ran and half stumbled down the dark hallway of the warship. One trembling hand covered a gushing wound in his cheastplate. The other grabbed for the wall, trying for balance. The long corridor in front of him faded in and out of view. His forced his optics open, forced himself to see, to keep moving. His medical programming that ran constantly in the back of his mind over years of practicing, told him he dare not fall over. The wound itself was hardly fatal. It was more than possible to survive perfectly well with an injury much worse. But he knew he was losing consciousness. If he fell down here, he would only be left to bleed to death as an example to the crew. He refused to offline only as an example of what happened to the ones that dared to talk back._

 _He leaned against the wall, and forcing his vision to focus forward, onto a door that was of no concern to him except as something to look at, Knockout activated his comm-link. "Breakdown. I need an assist at once. Junction foutrteen, near medmay."_

 _Surely his one friend left on board would help him. But no answer come over his comm. Dropping to his knees, as his weakening body refused to stand, he listened to the rushing of oncoming footsteps. He looked down in horror at the growing pool of energon, leaking between his fingers. The metal of his hand glowed from the mess. "Breakdown, please help me…"_

 _"Knockout," Starscream bellowed over him. His optics alone showed a murderous fury. "I don't recall dismissing you from my presence."_

 _"Com…mander… I'm sorry. I had…. assumed…"_

" _Never assume, Knockout" the commander smirked wickedly. He kicked the medic square in the faceplate. "It only gets you in trouble."_

" _I'm injured…" He knew at once that statement was a stupid one. It was Starscream that had inflicted the damage in the first place. Knockout forced his head up and made himself look into the commander's optics. He tried to play on his sympathy. But he remembered in a second that he would never get such a thing from Megatron's treacherous and favored little pet. He knew he should never have spoken up when Starscream had murdered that Autobot. It had been wrong. It had been overkill, and needless. But what had speaking out actually changed?_

" _I am faced with my own failure," Starscream growled. He yanked the medic to his feet roughly. A hard smack from pointed fingertips tore his faceplate open. "You should well be dead now. I wouldn't have thought a shaking weakling would be so hard to send to the pit."_

 _He felt his own body hit the floor hard, as Breakdown came running from somewhere up the hall. Surely the commander had only grown bored and given up on his brand of discipline._

Knockout snapped out of recharge quickly, and found himself partly sitting up on the recharge station, his hand over his chest plate, as though still trying to preserve his own life. In the dim glow of the station's power supply, he looked down. No flow of energon pouring down his body. He was fine. He forced himself to pull his hand away, and he shook his head at himself. He lay back down on the recharge station, and allowed himself a moment to get comfortable again. Looking around the room he began to calm down and only then realized just how panicked he had been in the first place. He badly needed more recharge time, and berated himself silently when felt his optics almost refusing to close out of fright. He forced them shut and with great determination forced himself lightly back toward recharge again. He knew full well it was the middle of the night. He felt foolish and silly. But no sooner had his processor began to power down, then he found himself back in his own memories.

" _Offline both of those, Knockout. Then dispose of them out the airlock."_

 _He found himself staring down at a pair of powered down and half way to scrapped troopers, both of whom had been dumped roughly into his large brightly lit medbay minutes before._

" _But… commander… they can be saved. If I could have my day freed up to do the repairs… I can have both back in the air in six, maybe seven days."_

 _Starscream grabbed him by both of his arms, yanking him closer to him, over one of the troops roughly tossed bodies. "Knockout, until our dearly missed great leader, gets well, if that should ever happen, I am your lord, not your commander. And I didn't ask if these two piles of scrap could be saved. I asked you to offline them!"_

" _Command… Lord Starscream, I am a medical officer. I am sworn to preserve the lives of my crewmates… not destroy them when…"_

 _Starscream's pointed fingertips scraped against the medic's shoulder panels, making awful scratches on his paint. He pressed his face in closer and growled at barely more than a whisper, filled with unmistakable hate. "Now why would I want to save two simple troopers while clearly be useless to me, while their recovery forces them to do little more than take up space. It was their own fault they were shot down by Autobots. They were too slow. Too slow gets you scrapped, medic. As does talking back if you fail to recall our last conversation. And know full well that I'd have you offlined if you ever got scraped as bad as those two wastes of metal. It's hardly personal."_

" _M…my Lord… give me a few hours. Let me try to…" Knockout never fished his argument for the lives of the troopers, before he was grabbed hard from behind, a rough hand at the back of his neck. His head was bounced hard against a monitor. Starscream may have been on the small side, and certainly appeared fragile. But he was stronger than one might have dangerously assumed. Knockout could only recall the last time he'd dared argue with him. He could feel the result of his courage pouring down his chestplate again._

 _He prepared to follow the unethical order, as his commander screamed about how much his was starting to sound like a pathetic Autobot._

He sat upright on the recharge station fast, and with such a lack of control over his own body. A hand, carelessly flung to the side, sent a data pad from the bedside table, crashing to the floor. The sound made him nearly jump a mile. He moved to turn on a light, needing to light the room as brightly as he could to chase away the memories. But the control for the lighting must already have been sent to the floor earlier, in another fright.

He got up from the recharge station quickly, found the lighting control nearly underfoot as he stepped forward, and swore out loud. He rushed out of the room as silently as he could. The dim overhead lighting of the base guided his way through the hall, and he kept on moving, trying to escape, and asking himself all the while what exactly he thought he was escaping from. He needed to be outside, of the place, out in the open. Oddly the openness of outside felt safe. Outside it was harder to feel cornered and that was what he needed; to not feel cornered by something he couldn't understand or see. He rushed toward the common room, silent and empty, and made his way across it. On the far side of the room, a huge ladder led up to the roof across, and he climbed up there. From the roof of the place, he could calm down watching the sky, assuring himself that the warship was not on Earth anymore and he was. The thought of lightyears currently between him and the life he once been sure he wanted, made his intakes finally slow considerably.

An Earth hour must have passed. Maybe more than that. Knockout sat still, learning gently against the base of a huge radio antenna. The fright he had woken up in had long passed and he sat watching the sky ideally, just waiting for morning to come. The night air was warm, and he enjoyed the slight breeze against his body. He reflected on the trip so far, and laughed slightly over something the small boy, Raf, had asked him while laughing. Something about a chicken crossing a road. 'Bee and Bulk' had laughed loudly at the next line. Apparently the bird simply wanted to reach other side of the street, and thus had crossed. Knockout still wondered silently why they found that so funny. Miko had explained it was the obviousness of the answer that made it funny. But he wasn't convinced. Agent Fowler agreed that it was silly. The rest of the bots had only looked confused.

"Hello?" The voice of a small human interrupted his thoughts. Knockout looked to the side, toward the access, which he had left propped open. Miko peeked up over the open hatch. Obviously she had climbed all the way up there, and he watched as she completed her climb to the roof, pulling herself up over the edge of the hatch grinning.

"I saw from the bottom, someone had left the trapdoor open," she explained, trotting across the tin roof in bare feet. "I knew someone had to be up here." She flopped down on the roof, near the seated bot and the antenna. She rested her head in her hands. Her wide eyed gaze studied him. "You okay, Doc Knock?"

"I'm fine," Knockout answered. He looked the girl over, marveling at her ability to have actually climbed up there to begin with. He knew there was a human ladder too, a little left of the bots' one, but it was still very high. The kid certainly had nerve, as the humans may have put it.

"You're up in the middle of the night again," she observed. She actually sounded concerned.

"So are you," he countered, before she could question him.

"Time zone issues," Miko said. He heard her groan softly, as she moved to flop backwards onto the roof, landing nearly under his left arm. "It's close to suppertime in Japan."

"Ah,' Knockout said, simply. "That would be a problem…"

"So what's your excuse then?" Miko asked. She rolled over and looked up at him, flat on her front, with her head over her elbows and both legs kicking behind her. "You can't blame it on a time difference. The other bots recharge fine here."

"I don't recharge very well," Knockout admitted hesitantly. "Well at least not lately."

"An insomniac Cybertronian? That can happen?"

"Well not ideally…"

"Not ideal for us humans either," Miko laughed. "Sleep is good. Wide awake is bad. Hey Knockout… can we see Cybertron from here?"

"No. It's too far away."

"Am I bothering you?"

Knockout shook his head at her question. In truth he was happy for company, even if it was that of a tiny human.

"Okay," Miko's small legs continued to kick and swing behind her. Her face showed concern again. "So why can't you slee… er… recharge?"

Knockout was silent for a moment, considering. He wondered if he wanted to explain, or if he even could. He thought of sending the tiny human back inside. He knew full well that she was not exactly supposed to be so trusting of him to begin with. All three had been warned and he had overheard that warning repeated more than once. The other two children were clearly nervous of him. One talked a bit with the other bots nearby – earlier he had tried to tell that silly joke. The other still stared him down and said little. But Miko showed no fear. She trusted him when she'd been told not to do exactly that. He wondered if perhaps that meant he should trust her too.

"I think you would refer to it as having very bad dreams," he said. He saw her eyes grow wider, and she sat herself up again.

"Bots can dream?"

"Yes."

"Is it the same thing as a human and our dreams?"

Knockout thought for a second. "I couldn't say. I'm not a human."

"Yeah, fair enough I guess," Miko shrugged. She inched closer, wigging a bit to move without standing up. "What do you dream about?"

"You really don't want to know."

"Sure I do. Maybe if you tell someone about it, you can stop dreaming it."

"Miko, life among Decepticons, will never be the same as life among Autobots. I did so many terrible things, but I was so often also on the wrong end of things nearly as bad. At least when it was me at the hands of my own people, I could defend myself. The humans barely stood a chance against me. It all just plays and replays all night long some nights. Autobots debate and reason, talk things over and hear you out. A 'con would sooner tear your optics out for talking back to him. We never learned to follow out of respect. It was always pure fear really. You obey or there is always pain. You obey, follow a thousand rules and maybe they like you. Maybe you get to take your place higher in the ranks. It doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense, or you have a better idea. You don't exist to think. Some days it got bad and brutal and those days will never stop replying when I want to recharge."

Knockout's optics lowered in disgust and he stared at the metal of the roof. He berated himself for speaking, for losing himself in his own honesty. He turned the fingers of both hands inward, forming light fists and refusing to look up. He wanted to stand up and retreat from the roof, but he couldn't bring himself to stand up, or even to look back at the little human to be sure he wouldn't hurt her by moving. What had compelled him to even try speaking as he had? The poor child must have been horrified and shaking. He hated himself knowing he had already done so much worse to that child before he had even really met her. He knew she could well have been as scared as he was, from that one life experience alone, and if she, or any human still screamed at night dreaming of his deeds, it would be entirely his fault. He heard small footsteps of the tin rooftop.

He could only have assumed the small human was about to walk away. At best she would only leave laughing at his weakness, call him the coward he knew he was already. At worst he had scared her badly. But instead of hearing the expected sound of the human retreating fast down the ladder into the base, the footsteps stopped again quickly. Knockout felt her jump up, clambering onto his right leg before she plopped herself down on top of him. He dared to look at her again and saw as well as felt her reach for a hand that he'd rested in front of him. She jumped again, holding on to him firmly. He almost chuckled through his own upset, imagining that clearly she had climbed on Bulkhead more than once. Finally, she stayed sitting on him, balancing on one of his legs, with her feet almost reaching the rooftop below. She wiggled and shifted more so that she could look up at him.

"So, why'd you end up with the 'cons to begin with?" She questioned. Her tone seemed the farthest thing from judgment that he may have expected.

Knockout thought about it a while. Then he thought longer. He had never tried to answer that before. Never actually been asked.

"I was born to a world already at war," he said, slowly, considering his answer. "Everyone had their side and they just fought and fought. The home I knew was divided by hate and anger, and looking back I wonder how many of us even knew what we were fighting for. Neutrality was still a bit of a thing once. I tried to stay neutral for a while. But there always comes a time to pick your side."

"Couldn't you just have picked Autobot instead?" Miko questioned. Her question, and the innocence of it, made him see just what a child could be in a world not torn to pieces by centuries of endless war.

He wondered if she would truly comprehend his answer. But he slowly gave one anyway. "Miko, entire families, whole cities, had their own sides in this. Neutral was one thing, and still not exactly well loved by the masses. But to me, Autobots were the enemy of everything I was taught to be true and ideal. I come from a 'con city. The Autobots were rebels, daring to stand against a new and better way that was taking a firm hold, living in some ancient and dead past. I was taught that we working to rid the eorld of an outdated caste system. Taught that our people were dying for the simple crime of being created lower class. I grew up to believe the leader of the Decepticons was a great thinker and planner, who would lead us to worldwide equality. I was taught to believe he would free the Autobots as well as ourselves when the war was won. Besides the 'Bots could never win the war, they were apparently lost, ill-informed and they needed us."

"But the Autobot side followed a Prime that wanted the same thing, equality, and end to the caste system of ancient times… That's what Ratchet once said."

Knockout nodded at her comment. He was impressed by this child. "He's right of course. The Prime fought for the very thing we claimed to fight against him for not wanting. We followed a power hungry tyrant who had mastered telling lies. But in war no one will ever tell you the other side of the story, only that we are right and they are wrong. And most never dare, or even think to look for truth ourselves."

He looked at the small human, sure he should stop talking. Surely she had only grown bored. But Miko still sat, balancing on him like anyone might sit in a bench, looking up at his optics and waiting to hear the rest.

"I dreamed of going to medical school," he said, continuing on. "But I had been born in a low caste. We didn't have such dreams, and as you can now imagine I was taught it was all the Autobots' fault my dream, and those of a thousand others had been taken from us. The 'con forces needed medics. There were just never enough, and given the choice most just wanted to be soldiers. Well a young one from the low class, that actually wanted to do the job no one wanted and the deal was made. I wanted to study. Megatron himself wanted to let me, wanted to help me, to sponsor my education. I would never have given up my neutral status and served the 'cons to be a solider on the front lines. But to be a medical officer… I felt I was as close as I could ever get to my dream… I may never know how he found me exactly. I was a nobody in a city of a million. But it's often been said that he had ears in the walls of the cities, and I guess those ears just listened and waited for young dreamers like I was."

Miko's eyes opened wide in clear surprise. Then the look faded as it became obvious she was taking it all in, understanding it. She shifted again so that she could sit leaning up against one of his lightly folded hands, clearly seeking a more comfortable sitting position. "So you wanted to help, once. You wanted to save lives."

Knockout nodded again, struggling to form words as coolant and washer fluid started to pour from his optics without any warning at all. He hoped the human wouldn't notice, but of course that hope was ridiculous. She was looking at him intently and her own eyes were sad now. Miko leaned forward, to wrap her hands around his fingertips.

"I think I must have ended as many lives as I've ever saved," Knockout said. He tried to make himself stop crying but it wasn't working very well. "I killed Autobots when I could and thankfully I was never a fighter or it would have been many more of them. I've killed my own people, the troops under my care, off-lining them because I was told too. If you are too damaged to rejoin the fight quickly, you are just a waste of space that can be replaced. You take up space, you don't get to live… Finally, I think I almost stopped caring if they lived or not, I stopped caring if I did. The war would never end, I would never be what I wanted, not like I remembered what that was. Nothing mattered but the war, the constant piles of damaged bots, my own survival one more day. I'd escape when I could. I'd drive faster and faster. I'd race on Earth and I'd win. I liked winning. Then I ran a guy off the highway because I was so angry all the time… I wanted to feel powerful, and then I hated myself later. And that one lived. I lost a friend not too long ago. The only true friend I'd ever have among the 'cons. So many of them laughed and mocked me for being sad… for caring…"

"Breakdown?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry he died. Bulk' may not have liked him, but you never deserved to lose your best friend."

"Thank you."

"Maybe, if only he'd lived, he'd left with you… you'd both be Autobots…" Miko mused. She sounded hopeful. It gave him hope too, and he nodded.

"I would have begged him to consider it… to at least try…"

For a while they sat together up on the roof of the base. Neither said anything. The girl stayed where she was, sitting on top of the bot, and he sensed her strange and unexpected trust in him not to hurt her. He felt himself undeserving of her trust, or that of anyone else. He understood without any words, that she was trying to teach him to stop thinking that. Knockout knew that a human lived only a short time. A link of an optic really, in the timeframe of his own people. And this one was still young for her own kind besides. But she was smart, and somehow seemed to know and understand things she shouldn't need to.

A noise from inside the small pocket of her sleeping pants got both of their attention. A small and quiet chiming sound. Miko sat up straighter and reached into her pocket. Knockout watched her pull out a comm device – cellphone- he thought that word was right. The little pink device chimed again in her hand.

"It's Jack," she said, reading her tiny screen. "He wonders where I am. Said everyone is already up and they want to play a video game."

Knockout looked up to the sky again. He had never noticed when the sun had come up, and it seemed the human hadn't either, but it was blazing overhead. His internal clock told him it was nearly, what the humans would think of as nine in the morning.

"Miko, you've got to get back inside," he said. He nudged her gently with one fingertip, to urge her to stand and go. The small human stood up, but instead of running off she stopped and turned back to him.

"Come back in too," she said, laughing a little. "You can play with us. I'll tell those boys to let you. We let 'Bee and Smokescreen play…. They just use very big controllers."

"Knockout shook his head and waved her away gently. "I don't understand video games. And the last thing I want is to get you into trouble."

Miko laughed loudly. "Trouble for being your friend? June said specifically don't try to talk to you because you are, and I quote, 'some Decepticon!' I don't think that's what you are at all. Not anymore. Therefore, I don't think I broke a single rule. Nothing wrong with being friends with an Autobot."

Knockout smiled at her strong implication of his chance at the redemption he so honestly sought. But he didn't know what to say to that and still felt there was no time to say anything at all. Her phone chimed again.

"Your logic is strange," he said simply, laughing.

She ran for the ladder. He worried she might slip off the roof, but of course she did not.

"Hey, Doc Knock," she said grinning before she disappeared from view under the trapdoor. "Logic is logic, right?"

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break**

Knockout had tried with little success to get in a little bit of recharge, late in the morning, after he'd gone back inside the base. Once again he'd been woken up by a terrible dream. He could barely recall the details this time, only that it had been bad, and that the human child, Miko was involved in it. He remembered waking up suddenly and might have actually yelled out loud as he'd seen her die somehow. This time at least it had been a dream of something that had never actually happened, instead of the usual repeating flashbacks. He wondered if that might almost be good news somehow.

The base was partly empty. He knew that Agent Fowler and June had taken all three children out for a meal somewhere, and someone had mentioned something about an amusement park. A few of the bots were away as well. He wasn't sure where they had gone and it didn't seem that important. Knockout made his way outside the base's main building and crossed the property to a usually empty hanger that he'd been told the bots used once in a while as a makeshift training gym. Knockout wondered in there for no real reason.

He had expected he would find a large unfinished space completely empty. But instead he found Bulkhead and Wheeljack. Both were working out with heavy punching bags and quite clearly competing to find out who could hit harder. Bulkhead was clearly winning that one. Knockout would never have expected any different. Both of the bots laughed, taunting and egging each other on, using language that would have never have been suitable in decent company. It was only when the punching bag that Bulkhead had been pummeling, was knocked loose from its heavy ceiling hook and swung wildly before hitting the floor with a mighty thump that their game was clearly over. Bulkhead swore again, kicking the thing. Wheeljack laughed, shaking his head at him.

"Fowler might just peel your paint if that left any damage to the ceiling in here," the white wrecker said, pointing upwards.

"Nah," Bulkhead answered. He slugged his friend hard in the shoulder panel, with a resounding mental clanging sound. "I'll just tell him it was your fault."

"Ha! You always did have a knack for keeping your own gears outta trouble and landing me knee-deep right in the scrap, Bulk'"

"Knockout, tell me you didn't see anything," Bulkhead laughed, as he turned and clearly saw him in the doorway.

Knockout gave a laugh of his own. Quickly he answered, "well that all depends… if Fowler asks, I didn't see a thing. If it's anyone else… well I might just have another funny story to add to the team's list of Bulkhead related disasters."

Wheeljack walked over quickly. He smacked the red medic on the back panel, before he could expect it. "Haha… looks like this guy's fittin' in around here. He's catching on, Bulk'. He's catching on."

Knockout might have laughed loudly with the wreckers at that, had he not been entirely winded from the needlessly hard blow. He never was sure exactly what to think of Wheeljack. The two of them had never really been too bothered with each other, or with being friends. The wrecker could be downright obnoxious, especially for an Autobot. And he had gone too far, that recent evening, with his high grade influenced ranting. But all the same, he had apologized sometime well after the fact.

"Seriously," the white wrecker said, he smacked the medic again, though thankfully not nearly so hard as the first time. Clearly he had taken the hint about that. "You're not such a bad bot. I was thinkin' this over the night we all got back to Earth. Even with the 'cons, I'm not sure you were ever that bad. Real pain to deal with, yeah. But pure evil like your big boss, or his second in command? No way."

Knockout was silent again. He didn't know exactly what he was supposed to say to that, but he supposed what he had heard was a good thing. He watched Bulkhead drag the punching bag away to throw it roughly in the back corner of the room, out of the way. The big green bot kicked the thing again swearing. He clearly hurt his toe doing so, and that made him hop for a second on one leg, swearing again. Wheeljack shook his head, and this time it was Knockout who laughed out loud.

"Bulk' ya down for a little hand to hand practice?" Wheeljack called across the huge room. Bulkhead waved a hand, declining.

"Miko should be back soon. I promised her I'd take her for a drive. Why don't you practice with him?"

"Me?" knockout exclaimed in disbelief. He backed up slowly, sure that the look on his face must have been ridiculous.

"Fight Knockout?" Wheeljack questioned. He sounded unsure about the idea. "I don't know about that…"

"I'm a medic," Knockout said firmly, shaking his head. "I'm not made for battle. My purpose is simply to step in once any of you nitwits manage to break something."

His attempt and banter bordering on trash talk, made both wreckers laugh loudly.

"Stuck up, little slag pile," Wheeljack said, staring the medic down.

"Obnoxious hunk of scrap," Knockout countered quickly.

"Think you're so far above obnoxious yourself?"

"Me? Obnoxious? Not possible."

"Ha. Arrogance is only another form of obnoxiousness."

"I take pride in my paintjob, you scuffed up, dull finished, mouthpiece."

Across the room, leaning against the wall closest to the door, bulkhead was still laughing loudly. Knockout laughed again a little too. They were all still just messing around… weren't they?

"You can talk just fine, but that's no good in battle," Wheeljack said. He stepped forward and shoved the medic backward, hard. He nearly caused him to stumble before he caught himself and stood backing away. "Bulk' might be right. We should have a go at this."

"I…. I'm not…"

"Ah come on. We're just having fun. You have a weapon. You must have a few good moves."

"I'm… not very good at it. Better at holding someone off, while I wait for back-up, or a ground bridge..."

"Well, there's your trouble!" Wheeljack exclaimed. His laughter had died out. He looked far too serious. He shoved Knockout backward again. This time the red medic was sent to the floor, hitting hard, landing flat on his back. "You don't try. You just run away."

"Running away makes the most sense to me," Knockout blustered out before he realized even what he was truly saying. He tried to get to his feet, but was kicked lightly in the chest plate and knocked back down again.

"Running away gets your own fraggin' team killed," Wheeljack answered. His voice now bordered on shouting. "And hitting the deck, shrieking, is not a blasted attack move!"

"I… I realize…. that…"

"You don't know what it's like to be drastically outnumbered. You got lucky. The 'cons are disabled, and you've never seen our side of an attack. But they'll be back. This war is hardly over." Wheeljack was full on yelling now, and his foot was planted firmly against Knockout's chest. He began to press down with some force. "No one faults you for having been on the wrong side. But you've never fought twenty troopers with only two bots to help you. You've never needed to look up, watching for fliers, while you fire at others on the ground. Your enemy was always on the ground. Most of ours are up, above us. There is no running from that!"

"I… I'm sorry… I…" Knockout could only stammer in shock and confusion over what he was actually supposed to do or say.

"Wheeljack," Bulkhead said loudly from the side of the room. Knockout could see the green bot moving slowly closer to them. "Maybe this wasn't a good idea. I only suggested you fight him for fun, for practice. Not scream at him like that…"

"He's gotta understand somehow, Bulk'"

Wheeljack pressed his foot harder into Knockout's chest plate, still not hard enough to really harm him, but more than hard enough to make him panic. The medic fought it back, felt the overwhelming need to run, fought back tears of shame and rage and confusion. And he listened as the two went on speaking.

"This is how it worked back in the wreckers. Rough 'em up a bit, scare 'em til they really started trying. There was no try back then. There was only do or die…"

"Knockout is hardly a wrecker. This is a medical officer. Get off him."

"They was never any real law against bashing up the medics a little…" Wheeljack pressed down harder with his heavy foot.

Knockout still quite fully trapped on the floor, looking up into the angry face of a wrecker still attached to some dead past, felt something rise up within his own processor. A kind of anger he had never truly felt before. Sure there had been anger. There had been downright rage. Anger and hate directed right at himself, at so the pointless war, at his own mistakes, his weakness. But he had only ever forced it back, down into the darkness of his own head, forced himself to deny he was angry at all.

"Frag you!" He screamed, with every bit of the all-consuming rage he had hidden since he'd defected, and probably so long before that. His arms reached up and he grabbed the white wrecker around the knees. Before the bot above him knew what hit him, he had forced him forward, sending him crashing facedown onto the floor. Knockout rolled quickly, coping the move he had seen so many times from other but never tried himself. Now on his side, he kicked hard, landing a good solid kick against Wheeljack's side panel. He stumbled to his feet, and prepared to hold his ground by the time the stunned wrecker got up himself.

"I'm not a slagging coward," Knockout yelled dodging a fist as it narrowly missed his faceplate. The next three managed to hit him but still he held his ground. His own rage keeping him on his feet. He managed to land a good kick, striking Wheeljack in the knee. Somehow, while his opponent stumbled backward, Knockout found time, the second he needed, to take his fighting staff from his storage compartment. The wrecker laughed in his face, egging him on, making him even angrier.

Knockout had never used the thing for any real combat. It barely worked anymore in the first place, but he wasn't planning on powering it up, only hitting and blocking with it. The second he had it in his hands and assembled in record time, he used it to block blows and an endless string of kicks. Every try at knocking it from his hands and he'd only fight harder, blocking and finally striking back. He had no hope taking the wrecker down and he knew that. But on some other level he hardly cared. Knocking him to the floor was not important. Simply beating him back as he himself was beaten down was what mattered to him. Soon though, just holding him off, just beating him back was not enough. He wanted to win. He wanted to beat the bot that had taunted him.

He made a bold move, swinging the staff wide, going for the wrecker's knees. His attack was quickly dodged and the staff continued its swing, sending him off balance. He tripped himself up, and fell over his own foot when he tried to catch himself. He fell to the floor. He wanted to hold a hand up, beg for a second to get back up, but there was no mercy in battle and he knew there would be none here either, as a kick landed against his front plate while he was down.

"That was dirty," he spat, still struggling and now struggling harder.

"And you assume your enemy will always be nice and clean? You know they won't. You were one of them for Primus sake. And they want you to die, maybe more than they want to kill any of us!"

Another hard kick. Knockout sputtered and gasped, winded all over again. A blow to the faceplate knocked him backward from his already half standing position. He refused to fall over again. He hated the very thought of another fall. There was so much he hated, and he used his anger at that fact, to haul himself up fast, and swing hand. His staff hit the wrecker in the middle another of his purposefully dirty attacks. Wheeljack hit the floor with a look of surprise and a slight gasp. He was back on his feet fast and charging at him. The next long minutes seemed to drag on and fly away all at once, in a mix of hits, kicks, dodges, and blows that just got harder and harder.

From somewhere in the room, Bulkhead had stopped yelling about it all being a bad idea and to please stop it, and instead began to shout at Knockout to block and kick, to darn well just try even harder. In moments though he was back to shouting at them to both stop, and something about it going way too far. Knockout landed another good blow, smashing a fist into the wrecker's front plate with all the rage he had not yet spent, and heard Bulkhead now shouting about how it was getting too violent, on both sides of the training match. Knockout all but ignored him and he knew Wheeljack must have been too, because the hits and kicks and constant hard impacts never stopped.

"I refuse to be scared anymore," Knockout yelled, without knowing where exactly that had come from, or why then. "I'm not some worthless retreating coward."

"I still don't believe you," Wheeljack shouted back, as he grabbed the medic violently by the back of his neck and slammed him face first to the floor.

"Wheeljack, what were you thinking?" Bulkhead demanded. Knockout could hear his large heavy feet running fast across the room toward them. But he didn't get up from the floor. The wind had been knocked from his intakes again and this third time it was worse than ever. He gasped and struggled and heard his own fans overworking.

As his systems began to settle and his intakes slowed down out of their sputtering gaps, he felt the stream of coolant pour from his optics. His hands shook, and he looked up into two concerned and visibly nervous pairs of blue optics, as both wreckers on their knees nearby reached out to help him up. He only waved a hand to make them back up, and looked around with his own confusion closing in on him.

"I don't think I'll make it," he cried, trembling hard. "I can barely close my optics without being terrified of myself, or seeing the past like its right now. I'd rather die than go back. But I can't stay on this side either without going insane trying to forget that I did so many terrible things. I won't go back. I won't go back. I'll never hand myself over. I'd rather die. I'd rather die."

"I should… get help…?" Bulkhead spoke quietly, uncharacteristically uncertain.

"No Bulk', well maybe so. It can't hurt anything," Wheeljack said with confidence. He stayed on the floor, no longer even trying to help Knockout up now. The medic only looked at them both through coolant clouded optics. He could feel his own body trembling even worse and couldn't make anything stop. "I've seen situations like this before. He just needs to process everything. And there is likely a whole heap to process."

"Bulkhead," a small human voice called from the doorway of hanger. Miko appeared, standing inside the proportionately huge doorway. Knockout made our outline, through a new stream of coolant and washer fluid. He tried again to stop his awful state and trying only made it all worse. "Hey Bulk' Smokescreen said he thought you came in here. I'm back if you still wanna go for that…"

She stopped speaking in mid-sentence and Knockout heard her small feet racing across the concrete floor. Her was much louder with her shoes on. He could only listen as she come closer. He heard her speaking, quietly, concerned. "Bulkhead…. Wheeljack… let me help."

"Miko, I'm not sure you should be…" Bulkhead had begun to say something back but he stopped before he finished.

"Bulk, back up! I don't wanna get stepped on by those big feet." Knockout heard Miko speak, taking charge like he had so far never heard before. Then her small body made a tiny thud as she dropped to the floor.

"How did this happen?" the small human demanded.

"I think it was my fault," Wheeljack answered. He sounded regretful. "We were just training. It wasn't meant to be serious, but it got out of hand. I thought I'd push him a bit, make him angry, make him want to win. I ended up throwing him to the floor, but I don't think I hurt him. I guess his processor started... well… processing basically. Dumping some of the emotional center, memory files…"

"Miko, I don't think you should be…" Bulkhead said. Their voices all sounded far away, but at least they were clear, and understandable.

"Bulk' try to find Jack's mother or Ratchet," said the small human voice. "Either one should know the right thing to do."

"Knockout," she said, speaking much quieter now. She slowly wigged her seated body into his field of vision, near his shoulder panel, which was still pressed awkwardly against the floor. "Do you wanna sit up a bit? I'm too small to help you, but a bot could. It looks uncomfortable down there."

He could only shake his head at her silently. His violent trembling had all but stopped and there were no more tears to cry, but still he was too overwhelmed, nearly frozen with shock and utter terror over something he could not see or comprehend and moving seemed far from doable. He was unaware of the position of most of his own body, and he only vaguely realized that fact when he saw her wiggle to her knees and scurry a slight way so that she could reach his fingertips. His right hand was somewhere to his right side, stretched across the floor as he had tried badly to catch himself when he was knocked down. The left had ended up right underneath his chest panel. He weakly moved a bit and tried to free that one. He knew he had landed horribly. He knew it should have been uncomfortable to stay that way for much longer.

"Okay" the small human said, slowly. She seemed to be very low to the floor, with her head pressed against the tips of his fingers. Her tiny arms wrapped around what would become a front side panel in his car form. "You can stay like that for a while, if you want. Do you want to talk to me?"

Again he could only shake his head slightly.

She had sound closer that time though. Other sounds seemed closer too, more real. Reality was good. Panic and terror over things he couldn't see was not so good. He noticed his own body, felt a sense of it as a complete form. One knee bent to the side awkwardly, and in growing discomfort. The other just far too straight and out behind him. One arm still wedged under his body, the side of his faceplate still in the dust that covered the floor. One hand still partly contained the human half sitting and half laying over top of it to hug his arm. That hand and lower arm was attached to a badly cramping shoulder, disagreeing with his body's bad positioning entirely. He thought finally of moving. Discomfort motivated him to get up, and he thought of the human still in his hand. He wondered how to move without throwing her off hand. He remembered that the other bots knew how to work with those tiny beings, and that he was still shocked at one determined to befriend him too.

He slowly moved his hand and felt her wiggle off quickly. She sat on the floor looking at his optics. He looked back at her, made a careful note of where she was, and carefully pushed himself up so he could sit. Being so cautious of someone tiny gave him focus. That was good. That was useful.

"It may not have been your fault," Miko said to Wheeljack, looking back and forth between both bots quickly. "He had a very bad night and I guess it's a bad day too."

"It… it's no one's… fault," Knockout finally managed to speak again. He sounded badly shaken and he knew it but he made himself go on speaking anyway. "You were… were well… intentioned. The training helped a bit…. I was so angry…"

He looked right at the little human who sat on the floor, with tears in her eyes, staring up at him. "Miko, I think I'm broken…"


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes/ Okay, finally, a new one finished and up! I really wanted to get done with it on the weekend. Clearly that didn't work out. A chapter made up mostly of conversations again.. I just like to write that way, and I'm usually happy with how those turn out.**

 **I really want to thank everyone for the positive feedback I got about the last one I posted. Honestly I was a bit worried about positing something that dealt so much with flashbacks, nightmares, and emotional issues. Fair** **enough** **, I'm just gonna not worry about it from now on and just write.**

Arcee wandered into the large main room of the base, to find Bumblebee and Raf messing around with some computer equipment. Both human and Cybertonian sized tools littered the work station that the boy sat on top of, and the bot stood in front of. The human child tapped away on a set of relatively huge control keys, with the palm of one hand. He looked at the monitor on the wall in front of him, reached forward for another couple of keys, banged on both and once and looked up again to see the monitor as it began to scroll through strings of Cybertronian text.

"'Bee, can you translate that?" Raf questioned. His tone was strangely matter of fact and patient as even for so young a human. "I can't read that fast. I'm still learning."

"System error… reboot mainframe… install updates… update failed… system error…" 'Bee read out loud, as text scrolled across the screen fast.

"Well, scrap it all," Raf said. He reached toward another of the control keys but then stopped and flopped back onto the desk top. "It's just gonna auto-reboot itself any second anyways."

As if right on the boy's cue, the screen went blank, and the fans began to whir as the system restarted on its own accord.

"Alt, F seven, space control, 'Bee," Raf said as the bot began tapping keys. "Gotta try to get this into safe mode before it fully powers up again. That might just do the trick."

"What are you two up to?" Arcee questioned, stepping closer. Whatever it was, she doubted she could help and hoped that neither would ask her to. Still she looked on with curiosity as the monitor lights came back on.

"Ratchet asked me to have a look at his computer," Raf explained. He looked at the monitor again, his hopeful expression more than clear. "Looks like it's got a nasty virus. I'm trying to fix it."

"I knew it. Ratchet's been browsing around illegal music download sites on his lunch breaks." Miko joked, laughing, from beyond the railing of the level above. She and Jack were busy fighting with video game controllers.

"Raf, do you mind if I borrow 'Bee for a minute?" Arcee asked. She chuckled with the others in the room, over Miko's joke.

"Sure," Raf shrugged and went right back to his work. "Smokescreen was just in here. Said he's coming right back. I'll just have him translate and hit keys for me."

Acree left the room again with Bumblebee following her. The two made their way through the base and out outside the large hanger doors. They stood for a while silently leaning lightly against the outside wall of Hanger E. They looked out over the expanse of the empty Nevada desert beyond the high chain-link fence and the guarded gate.

"It sure seems different out here now," Arcee said. "Down on Earth, with a home to go back to, and no 'cons here to fend off, or energon caches to find and defend."

"It is weird, just kind of hanging out down here."

"So often I wish things could have been different for us and Cybertron. Maybe we could have been explorers just for the adventure of it had there never been war. Maybe we would have found Earth just because it was waiting for us to find it. Maybe we would have fond so much out there somewhere, not because we needed to or die, but just because we could."

Bumblebee sat down on the smooth cement and leaned back against the wall. He was silent for a good while, just thinking. Finally, he said, "Honestly 'Cee I've never even thought about such 'what ifs' at all. I never knew Cybertron without war, so maybe I just can't imagine the what ifs of it all. The first memories I have of home were of 'bots and 'cons open firing at each other in the middle of the city streets, trading insults while they fired their blasters until someone either fell or ran away. I remember how most of us young ones would watch at the windows of the learning center, as low level soldiers from both sides would start to rip the city apart. Obviously we may not have been safe, so close like that. But none of us knew different of better. They'd been fighting for a century or two already, and the building was still standing so…"

"That's sad, 'Bee."

"It seems so now, looking back, yeah. But when you grow up in it, it just feels like life. Of course, my city was basically neutral. That was good in a way I guess. But it also meant everyone was still splitting into factions by the time I came along. I'm not sure open shooting in the streets like that would have been so common elsewhere. It also meant it was eventually wiped of the map. Torn to shreds from inside."

Arcee sat down on the ground, and looked out at the landscape through the chain-link. "I've said more than once; neutral territories were always likely the most dangerous places to be. You just have a 'bot and 'con in one place for long before they start yelling, and then out come the weapons and in come their friends. It just never stopped in neutral cities. Well at least until the city either fell to ruin or one side took the place."

"They say neutrals always had a choice," Bumblebee commented. "But to me, it never felt like a hard one to make at all. I was Autobot and I always knew it. I decided that so young. No doubt most of my class became 'cons. I guess most of the planet did. I just knew I wanted to side with the soldiers that weren't killing civilians on purpose and laughing about it. As soon as I was old enough to be allowed I volunteered. I guess the rest if history, as they say on Earth."

"You went by choice?" Arcee had never known.

"Yeah, I did," 'Bee answered. He fell silent again for a moment, watching next shift's gate watch step toward the booth near the fence. She looked toward the bots near the wall, and stepped into the booth by the fence a little too quickly.

The young human soldier had not been on that base before they had departed for home. Arcee laughed slightly to herself just imaging how strange it must have looked to a young recruit to see a pair of Autobots sitting around casually having a conversation, aware of their presence and function though she must have been. She laughed silently again just thinking that she and Bumblebee were the smallest ones, that human might encounter.

"I dragged you outside, because I wanted to talk with you a minute," Arcee said once she had finished chuckling.

"Sure."

"Nothing too huge, 'Bee. I just want to know how you are."

"How I am? Why?"

"Maybe because I, and the rest of the team, actually care and want to know."

"I know you guys do."

"Good. 'Cause we don't plan to stop anytime soon."

'Bee met her optics with his, and thought for a moment, before he finally spoke again. "I'm good. Really. I would say I'm always good, but of course that would be a lie and you'd spot it before anyone. I…. I just… A lot has happened all at once and I never knew so much change could happen at once. So much is lost, but we've had gains I never expected either. Honestly, I think I'll be in slight shock and even denial for years over the thought that we are actually stationed back home, on our own planet, when we all thought it was gone forever. I'm still sad for the loss of a great bot and leader. Surely we all are. I still wake up some mornings from recharge and expect it'll be like it was. Some days I'm even still surprised to hear my own voice again."

"A lot of ups and downs for a young bot," Arcee said, understanding.

"Being back, even if it's only for a few more days, is like being back in the times that were always most familiar. The scenery of Earth, the crowded base designed for humans and refitted for us the best it could be, even Ratchet yelling about how he needed something someone broke. It's… home…"

"One more thing I needed from you, 'Bee," Arcee said after a minute, of enjoying the late evening sun, still warm enough as it began to set, to warm her body armor. The black and yellow bot looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to go on.

"It's about Knockout," she said. "I guess he had a serious panic attack this afternoon. I wasn't here on base then. But it sounds like it may get worse before it gets any better. Scrap, who would have known he'd be so unstable like this. It doesn't help that he always tried so hard, to hide his state and hope it just sorts itself out without our help."

"We can only hope he'll start talking more. If only someone understood even some of what's really going through that processor of his…"

"Would you believe that someone might just be a human?"

"Miko?"

Arcee gave a loud laugh. "How'd you ever guess?"

Bumblebee laughed too. "Because June Darby very specifically told her not to trust him."

"Fair enough, 'Bee. I must say I'm not sure how to feel about that situation. He talks to her, of all people, and she likes to listen to him. She's small enough to fit in his hand. I guess she's just not threatening like we might be. Eventually she might just learn his whole story. At the same time though I can't forget that he was still a 'con until recently. It was getting easy to forget that back at our home base. But here, with the children around, I think we need to remember."

"I really believe he won't hurt her."

"Not on purpose," Arcee shook her head, unsure of exactly what it was she meant to say in the first place. "I mean, I don't think he wants to hurt anyone anymore. I'm not sure he ever truly wanted to exactly. But I can't help but think of about a hundred ways this new situation could go wrong."

"He needs a friend Arcee. One who for whatever reason he can trust to talk with. And if he's up the challenge of keeping track of a hyper, loud little human then that might be a good thing…. Of course he might have to fight Bulkhead for her..."

His last line made Arcee laugh. Then she turned serious again. "Ratchet insisted today that something else Knockout really needs now is true stability. He thinks this no longer a 'con but not quite an Autobot situation, is only going to make it worse. Sad as it is, Cybertron, our whole culture and identity really, is one of factions. As it was explained, he could almost feel like nobody at all now, and that's never going to be a good thing."

"So, Ratchet thinks we should speed the process of making it official?"

"Yeah. I told him that's a no go. He's still on probationary terms, and will be for quite a while. It doesn't mean we don't like him. Its just how its done."

"If I know Ratchet, he must have been quite insistent about the matter?"

Arcee nodded. "Yeah. He's a stubborn old bot, and not above breaking a rule here and there, or inventing a new one, when it suits a greater purpose. Anyway I wanted to know what you thought about this."

"Me?" Bumblebee questioned, surprised as ever by a want of his opinion. He considered carefully for a couple of long moments, and answered. "It's only been a matter of several Earth months. That's just not nearly long enough, you're right. If we went ahead this soon, Knockout would have completed the process of completely switching factions faster than anyone so far, and by a considerable amount of time. There's a good reason for a probationary term."

"You know, 'Bee, most days I still can't believe we even have a need for this conversation at all. I might have been the most shocked of all of us, when Knockout defected, I know. I can't help thinking I must have had my head in the clouds for a while or something, that everyone else saw something I didn't. Recently though it's been so obvious, this is really what he wants. More than anything I think."

"How is he now? Have you seem him, this evening?"

Arcee nodded, as she looked out again toward the gate. A car she recognized as Agent Fowler's, rolled up and stopped at the checkpoint. Fowler drove on through the gate, waving once at the pair of bots. June was with him, waving with more enthusiasm.

"Knockout ran for his room again. Ratchet said he tried to bring him to the medbay to check him over, you know just in case something really is wrong. No such luck it seems. If there's one bot here as stubborn as ratchet, it's Knockout. It's gotta be a medic thing. I banged on his door, and he finally let me in for a minute. He didn't much of anything to me, other than that he feels like the wreckers must think he's pathetic and he worries Miko is horrified. I told him nether is the case. I hope I'm right. This is just one big mess. Of course he refused to let me walk him back to Ratchet in the medbay…"

Fowler parked his car right in front of the door, hopped out and ran right for the base, in an obvious hurry. Shaking her head and laughing out loud June climbed slowly out the passenger door and walked toward the bots. She looked around, still shaking her head and still laughing.

"We were on our way to the movies over in the next town. Midnight showing. We bought advance tickets, which wouldn't know it, Bill thinks he left in the drawer of his desk… somewhere in that pile of mess. I asked him twice on the way out there if he had 'em. He insists both times they're in the glove-box! Arcee, please tell me Jack is staying out of trouble."

Fowler raced back out side again, and the two hurried back into the car before the conversation could be finished. The two bots waved them off, laughing, as the car, sped away, nearly sliding on the gravel road.

"I'm happy those two found each other," Arcee said. She finally stood up again, the ground becoming uncomfortable. "It looks like they both needed somebody. Oh and 'Bee, regarding Knockout, I think we should go ahead."

Bumblebee nodded once. "Fair enough. If no one else objects and Knockout wants to, then I agree. To complete the official commitment to the Autobot cause, will require someone to speak on behalf of the 'bots and will of Primus. I fear this may be the last time its ever done like this. The old ways will just keep on dying out now, without a Prime."

"One last try at the old way then. I think it should be this way. So 'Bee….. who will speak for the bots then? Someone will need to step in…."

'Bee considered again. He had not thought that far ahead. As he looked about again over the desert and the bit of Earth he'd come to know as home, he knew the right answer. "Jack got the Cybertron mission. Raf got the job of back up on the ground bridge, and he's learning our language. This has got to go to Miko. Fitting anyway, everything considered."

Arcee only nodded her hesitant agreement. Her processor was still filled with every way this could all go wrong. She turned to go back inside. She would find the little human, and try hard to teach her everything she needed in too short a time. Bumblebee ran off to knock on Knockout's door, only hoping he was in the mood to at least listen if not converse. Surely he would be excited for the news that he would be officially among the Autobot ranks the next night.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Miko found Knockout outside, behind the basein the early hours of morning. He was sitting on a patch of newly cut grass near the chain link fence. He made that three meter high fence look small. Miko laughed and hoped he didn't decide to learn on it. The bots all knew better, but Knockout was surely far less experienced with such things. The human laughed at the thought of how quickly he'd learn, if the fence fell over.

"Miko!" This time he sounded truly happy to have spotted her. She walked quickly closer and hopped up onto one of his knees, he placed a hand behind so she couldn't fall, and she leaned against it, looking up at his red optics and grinning.

"So, I guess it's official then," she said. "You're really going to be an Autobot!"

"Yeah."

Miko looked up at him laughing. He gave a puzzled look, but said nothing. That alone only made her laugh a bit more. "I just thought you'd have a bit more to say about it. I mean, how do you feel about that? Happy? Excited? Something else?"

"I am happy of course. This is what I want. But… kind of terrified too. I can't help thinking I'll mess up someday. I don't know how to be an Autobot. I was better at being bad. Sure, anyone can say it wasn't entirely my fault. Survival, fear, lack of any positive influence in life and all that stuff people like to say to make the bad seem at least slightly better. But none of that negates free will. Not entirely."

"Hey at least you want to try a new way. How many 'cons are there that send their whole lives honestly beveling they're right and there is absolutely nothing wrong with a single thing they've ever done?"

"I was that way once..."

"Maybe so. But at least you finally figured it all out."

"Thank you, Miko," his tone said that he meant it.

"Can we go for a drive?" Miko questioned. She was about to hop down.

Knockout appeared to think a moment and then he slightly shook his head in clear conflict over it. "I really don't think I'm allowed to take you away from this base. I can think of a few bots and a couple of humans who would likely, to use another human expression 'hit the roof,' if I did that. You've got two friends who were wreckers and that thought just plain scares me. Maybe even more than Megatron and Starscream."

Miko laughed again. Clearly he was exaggerating on purpose. She was happy to hear him trying for humor after the state she'd found him in the day before.

"You'll make a great Autobot," she said, partly serious and partly not so much. "You're already obsessed with following the rules."

She got down, and looked up at him again. "In any case, no one ever said it's a rule exactly. They've never said you couldn't, only that you shouldn't. You haven't gotten to drive since you got here. Don't you wanna feel the road under your tires again?"

Knockout stood up, and within a second he was in his vehicle mode next to the human, with his passenger door already sitting open. Miko heard his slight chuckle from inside the red sports car as she climbed inside.

"I can't drive too far away with you," Knockout said, speaking more cautiously then she usually heard from him. "Also, hate to say it, but I think the speed limit probably matters now."

Miko laughed. She put her seat-belt on. Any Autobot she'd ever ridden with had insisted upon that, and she knew he might just demand the same now. "So, how'd you manage to find a car like this to scan for your vehicle mode, in Jasper Nevada anyway?"

"I didn't. I finally gave up and scanned one near Las Vegas."

"Good thinking."

"Of course." He turned on his vehicle mode's sound system. Not loud and blasting like Bulkhead's always was.

"Hey Doc Knock," Miko said as Knockout drove the gravel road away from the base and out to the highway, "The day you finally gave your notice and took off with the 'bots, Arcee said once it was pretty epic, not to mention funny in hindsight."

"Things do tend to look different in hindsight."

 _"Now_ _w_ ill you believe I'm joining the winning team..." Miko laughed, repeating the line she'd heard a couple of the bots quote as they once relayed the story to her.

"The others have laughed about that a couple of times. The strange thing is, I don't actually remember that at all." Knockout turned onto the highway and sped up. "I may or may not have accidentally busted an important device by mistake… I couldn't say. It's all pretty blank until the moment the ship started to crash. I remember running to bail out with the Autobots. I think I recall trying to lead, since I knew the ship. For some reason I will always remember that I could see smoke pouring up from a console at junction six. Just standing there a second while the smoke rose up, and it starting to really hit me that my old life was gone and there was no going back from there. One of the 'bots finally grabbed my arm and I followed them. I know I nearly screamed in fright at not having seen them come closer to me. I can't even say which one of them it was."

Miko said nothing for a while. She watched the sandy landscape and the occasional passing car, and the red lighting of the transformer's dashboard and console. She waited for him to go on speaking to her, but he didn't. She listened to the music playing over his speakers. It was nothing like the music she heard when she rode in Bulkhead. This was…. Show-tunes and early twentieth century lounge music?

She looked up when she heard the sound of a roaring engine overhead, and watched as a low flying small plane flew over the highway. She watched it as it crossed the Nevada dessert, and banked to the left somewhere far ahead. It gained altitude as it took off east. Probably more cautiously than any human should have done, she watched it go.

"Of your several infamously known traits, being quiet was never one of them," knockout said after a few minutes. "The rest of the team, might just be shocked… or maybe even worried for your state of being..."

"I was just…. trying to think. I have a lot to remember for tonight too. Maybe I should just write shorthand on the back of my hand or something like that. This is important. Speaking for Cybertron… Arcee should have asked Jack. He's better at that sorta thing."

To her surprise and dismay, she heard Knockout's loud laughter over his speakers. "I'm not sure I will ever understand exactly how you fleshies think and reason. From what I understand, you tried to be noticed, tried to be given the 'good jobs' the other two got. Then the 'bots pick you and you only say it should have been one of the other two because they are better."

"I think you're right..."

"Miko… Jack almost hates me. I can't say I blame him sadly. I'm still amazed and baffled because you don't. Raf is still half way to terrified of me. Again, I can't say I blame him either."

"Sorry Jack's being so mean to you," Miko said. "I worked with him on the team for almost a year and we are still good friends now. He's not usually like that to anyone." The roaring aircraft engine caught her attention again and she looked up, out the side window, to see the small plane as it swooped low, back over the highway and Knockout again.

"It's alright. Really. I hadn't expected any of you to be nice honestly." Knockout said, as he drove on down the highway, following a bend in the road as it began to slowly dropped down into a valley, and huge worn down rocks and cliff faces rose up on either side. The plane overhead cut across the clifftops and appeared overhead again as the car came around the sharp bend. It then picked up speed and rose higher once more and roared away.

"Umm… Knockout… did you see that?"

"Most of the time on Earth a plane is just a plane, Miko," the bot in vehicle mode said. He sounded like someone trying not to sound concerned about something. She let the matter drop, if only because she didn't want him to panic again.

"Can I ask you a question?" He asked her.

Miko looked at the dash console. She never had quite figured out exactly where to look when talking to a 'bot in vehicle mode, since their 'eyes' were hidden somewhere unseen, and eye contact was not possible. Bulk' had said once that it wasn't really all that important where someone looked, so she had always tended to talk to the console. "Sure. What's up?"

"Yesterday, I kind of ended up losing it, made a wrecker nervous and that takes a lot to do… but you, tiny little human, knew what to do. I'm curious is all, how you would possibly have known."

Miko thought for a second of exactly how to explain. "I have an aunt back home, who is very mentally ill. Oh not just the odd panic attack here and there. She's been in and out of hospitals for as long as I remember. Her husband left her years ago and she lived with us for a while. She used to watch me after school, but I ended up watching her some days instead. Hmm… a huge bot and a simple panic attack is nothing, when you've faced down a five foot human, who sudden becomes convinced the middle of making lunch that a ten year old is plotting to turn her over to Russian spies. One night she nearly burned our apartment building down, because she was trying to burn 'top secret military files' in the stove. They were really just some mail and a pile of old rent receipts. The police showed up and wanted to take her away. Smoke was pouring out the windows. My father come home, and me and him both told them it wasn't her fault. That she was just very sick, and needed some help.

"My host mother out here, had panic attacks too. Nothing too serious or anything, but still I learned that a hot cup of mint tea always helped. I'd make her some when she had her episodes, and I'd find her shaking in the corner of the couch, saying she was going to have a heart attack. Their daughter was depressed. Nice person most days she would visit though. She lived across town. Oh… than there was my host family's neighbor up the road. Survived a war I guess, from what I heard. He'd have flashbacks sometimes, standing out on the sidewalk by his mailbox, crying, shaking. The neighborhood kids used to walk on the other side of the street. But I thought I could just be nice to him. Turned out his name was Pete, and he loved to cook. I taught him how to make some Japanese food. Hey Knockout…?"

"Yes?"

"You told me last night, you think you are broken. I doubt that very much. I think, well we all think so far, you just need to let someone help you. We're all different, human or Cybertronian, doesn't matter. We all have something to deal with, something to offer, something to fix, something to accept. Everyone wants to help if only you would just stop trying to run away from them and yourself. No one is broken until they're dead."

"I'll try, Miko." Knockout's agreement was cut off by the beep of his comm-link, and a flashing little red light on his dash. It must have been a private comm because Miko heard nothing of any conversation. But in under a minute, the bot turned his vehicle form around right on the empty highway and began to drive back the way he had come.

"That was Bulkhead," he explained. His tone was a mix of amusement and concern. Says two of us were noticed missing, and he wondered if I might just have swiped his partner. His words, not mine."

Miko nearly busted out laughing. "Yep, sounds like Bulk'. Hey, are you already fully part of the Autobot comm network?"

"Yes."

"Connect me to the base for a second. We'll probably end up reaching Ratchet, since he normally works communication, and he's probably mad at us now too, because Bulk would have talked to him first. But I need old cranky tires to pass on a message."

"Fair enough." Knockout pulled up the requested comm-link.

"It's us," Miko said, speaking to the dashboard to be heard over the comm. "Doc Knock didn't swipe me. I swiped him. We're headin' back." They both laughed.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Starsceam tapped his metal fingertips, on the edge of a metal tabletop, causing a terrible clicking noise. He had always somehow immensely enjoyed causing the noise on purpose, and likely because it tended to make his colleagues constantly cringe. He turned his mouth up to form a snarling expression and glared around the control room. He stopped his tapping and stomped to a window, through which he stood glaring out over the top of a city.

"Planet Earth," he snarled, adding a sound of distaste. "So many years spent hoping to get off this rock pile, only to end up flying right back here again, chasing after Autobots. And they came willingly. Never could understand it really. They would have given their lives for this mistake of a planet, and it's ridiculous organic lifeforms. A shame too, I must say. I so wanted to extinguish each of their sparks at home, on Cybertron..."

He turned back to face the others, seating at the table, and to look over a collection of simple troopers that stood around the edge of the room. He snarled again at a pair of the troopers who elbowed each other, laughed quietly and whispered at a third, to one's left. He stomped back to his seat and flopped down into it, making a great show of appearing nearly bored with the whole meeting.

"So back to business then," he said, placing one small foot on the empty chair beside him and leaning backwards slightly. He began to tap his fingers again. Several troopers and Shockwave all cringed quite predictably at that. "The fleet is restored to a reasonable number of loyal supporters and fighters for the cause. I think we can all agree the cause is still the cause and worth it, and blah blah, so and so forth. Let's make it official then, proclaim me the great and supreme, one true and only leader of the Decepticons, we'll go finish a few Autobots. Then we'll go home, and I and my ruling council can lead our planet into a new golden age."

The whispering trooper, one near the door, was at it again. He elbowed his teammate in the side panel and both had a chuckle. This time the third joined in on it. Starscream leapt from the chair he had just sat back down in and stomped over to the offending bots, in a few long furious paces. He yanked the whispering one away from his place by the wall, and closer to his faceplate, snarling an angry growl at him.

"Is there something you wish to share with the group?" Starscream growled, optics never leaving the widening ones of his subordinate. The purple trooper shook his head mutely. Starscream let go of the trooper, and patted him gently, if not a bit mockingly on the shoulder panel.

"What good is a ruler who will not listen to the concern and positive suggestions of his loyal followers?" He asked casually, twisted sarcasm dripping from his voice with each word. Shockwave and Soundwave both had the faces, hidden as always behind their respective chosen face shields and their expressions were thus impossibe to read. But he saw them turn turn toward each other slightly to exchange glaces that each other could never read either and he could only imagine a mix of delight, dread and amusement on each hidden face. He loved it! "Come on then. I would absolutely love to hear anything you may have to say."

"I… I just wondered..." the clearly terrified trooper said quietly, optics respectfully looking into those of his leader. "What qualifies you to lead us exactly?"

Starscream shot the trooper dead with a shot from his blaster before the poor bot could even react. The rest of them standing nearby backed up a pace of two, and most bumped against the wall in the process. The self proclaimed Lord of the Decepticons, looked around at the gathered group and gestured around casually.

"Any other concerns anyone would like to bring to the floor?" he asked in mock boredom. When several heads shook silently and the rest just stood looking horrified, he gestured toward the offlined bot, he'd let hit the floor in a heap. "Alright then. Somebody clean up that mess. I don't care who."

"Soundwave," he said, walking slowly back to his seat at the table. "I would like to congratulate and thank you for your latest contribution to my continued work." He gestured at the usually silent officer, who sat silent as always. His explanation was directed mostly at the troopers, who until then had been out of the loop. "Soundwave here managed to successfully locate both a human Autobot pet, and a certain defector from among our ranks. Now clearly I'm really only after the

defector, our medical officer who decided it would be a good idea to turn against us for reasons I may never fully grasp. The pet human was a bonus, just for fun. He let both go, as instructed. Let Knockout think he's safe, and that his new friends' game is working out for them all. I am planning a nice little attack, and thanks to Soundwave following in his new vehicle mode, he was able to get a good idea of their location."

Soundwave nodded once, accepting the acknowledgment as always without fuss or argument. Surely there were many who could learn much from him.

"Soundwave, how do you like your new mode? I know you were always hesitant to fly an Earth based aircraft form, and I think you deserve to be commended for finally daring to take on the new challenge. I was never much for liking this terrible planet, but I do admit, Earth does offer something in the way of flight capability. Isn't it fun?"

Soundwave nodded again, once, politely. Silently.

"Now, I must also offer my thanks to Shockwave," Starscream continued, gesturing toward the much bigger well armored 'con sitting to his left at the table. "It was of course he, who engineered and successfully carried out, Soundwave's rescue from the shadow zone."

"Hmm..." he mumbled, getting up to wander to the window again. "I almost wonder if perhaps we shouldn't actively seek to destroy that human pet I mentioned before. I do think she and those other blasted children had something to do with him ending up there in the first place."

"Lord Starscream, if I may, I wish to speak," Shockwave said from his place, still seated in his chair. The new ruler nodded to him, turning from the window and he continued, "I think that some commendation is in order for you as well, my lord and friend. It was you, with minimal help from countless others of far less importance, who got the Nemesis back up into working order. You who gave us all a working space-bridge. Also, if now is a suitable time to bring this up, I would like to point out that with Knockout long gone and soon to be obliterated for his treachery, we are in urgent need of a new medic."

"Yes, yes of course," Starscream considered carefully. Shockwave was indeed right obviously. A medical officer was hardly a role the a warship of Nemesis' could safely run without for long. It had already been too long, and there had already been unnecessary damage caused by the unfilled role. "I'll work on finding a suitable replacement, and preferably someone less concerned with his fragging paint job, and annoying the crew from here to the next blasted planet over. I must admit though, sometimes I think I'll almost miss Knockout. He certainly did have some great one liners. Perhaps we need a second of silence to honor the memory of what he once as to us, before we destroy him with the rest of the Autobots"

 **Notes/ Of course you just knew those 'cons would surface again, didn't ya? Maybe it's just me, but watching the first episode of TFP,** **Starscream's character was going in a slightly**

 **different direction than he ended up later. He started out entirely merciless, heartless, killing a captured Autobot without appearing to have a thought about it. Clearly he did it just because he could. Hasbro seemed to tone him down quite a bit throughout the series. But the direction he seemed to have started out in, is what I've tried to take inspiration from. That said, 'bad guys' have never been as easy for me to write as the good guys are. This was partly a writing challenge, I wanted to try.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes/ Just a short little mini chapter this time. I was not originally planning on writing this one, and it's not that important to the plot. I've always quite liked the fanfictions that others have done, dealing with the kids and their lives outside of working with the Autobots, or just away from the base, doing their thing and talking, and this kind of ending up being my try at writing something like that myself just for fun. It ended up taking a turn I wasn't planning on.**

Jack climbed quickly out of Smokescreen's front seat. Miko and Raf were right behind him, jumping out of the back seat. The Autobot had managed to angle park nicely between two yellow lines in front of a mini mall. It shouldn't have been a difficult thing. Any transformer could park themselves as well as any human driver could park a car. But this one had always been more concerned with burning rubber than with proper and legal parking.

"Thanks for the lift, Smoky," Miko said, checking to see that there was no one around at the moment to catch on that she may have been talking to a car.

"Hey, no problem. Great excuse to get out, and take a little drive, right? I'll wait for you." The bot replied.

"Smokescreen, remember..." Jack took a second to remind him cautiously. "Low profile. Middle of downtown, business hours, people everywhere..."

"Yeah yeah, got it. Robots in disguise. No funny stuff or braking cover. I'm good."

Leaving the bot in his vehicle form near the doors to wait for them, the three humans hurried into the 'One Stop,' grocery store. They hit the snack isle first and proceeded to stock up on various junk food for their planned horror movie marathon later with the Autobots. They needed milk and cereal too, some eggs and bacon, and they remembered the can of ground coffee Fowler had asked them to pick up while they were in town.

"Do you guys want the think cut bacon or the thin cut for breakfast tomorrow?" Raf asked his friends. He held up a package in each hand, standing by the meat cooler.

Miko shrugged. "Don't matter to me. Bacon is bacon. Let's get bread for toast too. Jack, any bacon preference?"

"I'm not coming back with you guys tonight," Jack answered. "I'll probably be back at the base tomorrow afternoon for a while, but not by breakfast time."

Raf and Miko exchanged looks of surprise and confusion. Miko, who was carrying the basket of groceries, hurried to the nearby checkout, and unloaded it. Jack hurriedly handed the clerk the folded bills Agent Fowler had given him.

"Jack," Miko cried as the trio left the store with a plastic bag each. The 'One Stop' was the end slot of the mini mall, and she quickly pulled him right around the side of the building, out beside the dumpster and a back alley that bordered a vacant lot. "What do you mean you aren't coming back with us? What the scrap?"

"I've just got a lot to get done," Jack answered, looking from one of his friends to the other. "Remember, I'm not on vacation away from home, like both of you. I live around here. My mom is up to her eyeballs in wedding planning, and I think I should hang around home tonight and help her. She keeps asking me about flowers and center pieces. I think she really wants my opinion… even though I told her I'm no help. I mean, what do I know about flowers?"

"Wedding plans?" Miko questioned loudly. If her motivation for dragging him behind the store had been to avoid being overheard, the volume of her voice that second might just have nullified her efforts. "Whoa, your mom is going to marry Agent Fowler?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah. They got engaged last month. I think its kinda fast, but those two really are good for each other. The wedding is in November."

"You never said anything, Jack," Raf said. He stood swinging a grocery bag around a bit, and thinking. "Then again, I guess nobody ever asked. So, what do you think of that? Good news? Bad news?"

"It's good I guess. I mean, my mom deserves to be happy too, right. She needs someone to love her and now she's got him. Bill's got a daughter too. Lives in Alaska with her mom. I'll finally meet her at the wedding. I guess her name is Cassie and she's ten. It all seems weird still, but its not bad. Having a step father with military connections will be pretty cool. I'm joining the air-force after collage, so..."

"Collage?" Miko exclaimed. "Wow, you're already thinking about that, Jack?"

"Well sure. I graduate high school next June. This time next year, I'll be packing for school, hopefully in Rhode Island if I get in."

"Rhode Island? Jack, that's across the country."

Jack laughed. "Yeah, says the girl all the way from Japan. I'm not going half as far from home as you already have."

"But you've never even left the county… well except for ground-bridging. Wow Jack, do you really wanna leave this place?"

"I think so, yeah. I can always come back again. I just… you were right once when you said small town Nevada isn't all there is. I've often thought if I were to leave I'd go our east, so I thought why not. And it's a very good school. It's a military collage. Hmm…. I think Raf graduates next year."

Raf nodded, and kept on swinging his bag around. "I will, yeah. It's crazy I guess. I'll be almost fifteen then. I don't even now what I want to do with my life yet. My dad says I've got lots of time. I just fast tracked through so I wouldn't get bored. Maybe I'll take collage classes online. Physics and advanced computer programming I'm thinking… maybe a little trigonometry to just for fun."

"What about you, Miko?" Jack asked. He sat on the ground near the dumpster. The others followed suit, and their bags formed a neat little heap between them.

"Me? I dunno. I'm a year behind in school. Funny to think Little Raf will finish before me. I wanna come back to live in America though for a while. I might try to go to collage here. Well not here, here. New York city probably, but, yeah. I want to study music. I'm not just a metal head you know. Mom hates that I want to do that. My dad's just happy I'm going to be anything at all."

"It's quite amazing really," said Jack. "Just months ago we are all kids, already helping save the world, well two worlds really. Now we're all just… normal. Sitting around having a normal conversation, about normal life and a normal future, on a normal planet Earth."

Miko stood up, and offered a hand to pull Jack to his feet. "Well, we can go back to being normal in a couple days. Right now we have a big night at the base. Huge night for Knockout I guess. He'll really be an Autobot. It's official. And I brought some great horror films with me from home. Ever seen Japanese movies? These ones are funny! Bulkhead is looking forward to a giant city crushing monster double feature!"

"Miko, how can you trust him?"

"Bulkhead? Jack, he's my bot partner. We were partners for a year. Why shouldn't I…"

"Not Bulkhead. Knockout. You actually want to be his friend. How is that even conceivable after what he's done?"

Miko was silent for a moment, considering, when she never really had before. Thoughtfully, she answered, "I dunno. I didn't think I'd be his friend either. I thought I'd hate him too, maybe more than you do."

"I may be just some dumb high school kid, but I hope the bots knew what they were doing, taking in that 'con. Does nobody think maybe he's lying? Does nobody think maybe he'll sell them out? Maybe they're right when they say he really does want to be an Autobot and stay loyal to them. Fair enough. But what if the 'cons come to him with an offer he can't refuse?"

"You haven't heard anything I have. I can't even say much about any of that because it wouldn't be right, and he trusts me. But he would rather die and than go back. Believe me on that."

"He threw my Mom into his trunk. He kidnapped a classmate. That was uncalled for even if the guy was a jerk. Okay maybe I can forget about the Vince kidnapping thing. That was so early on… he did get the wrong guy thinking he was one of us… yeah okay. But my mom and my soon to be step father! And what about what that 'con did to you? Surely you can't have forgotten that. He held your container that day we were dragged to Cybertron in trade for the keys..."

"He was following orders," Miko said sadly. "No, I don't think for a second that what he did was right, but we know how the 'cons think. We've seen how heartless and brutal… Jack he may have died if he hadn't done that."

"I hate to say this, Miko, but some bots are better off dying, I think."

"Jack," Raf said. He'd nearly fallen silent for several minutes. "Isn't that a bit mean? I think you're right to be mad, and maybe you should sit this one out if that's what you wanna do. But, Prime always used to say anyone deserves a chance at redemption, remember? Knockout is gonna be an Autobot. We all know the 'bots could use any new help they can get in case the 'cons ever were to come back. Either that or they will never come back, and the war is over. In that case, who cares about factions anymore, anyways?"

Jack shook his head and looked at his feet. He picked up a small rock and idly tossed it a short distance. "So maybe I was just a little bit out of line. I just hate this whole situation. And then I stop and think about it and realize that there shouldn't be a situation at all, or at least not knew we should understand or care less about in the first place. Autobots, Decepticons, this isn't our war. And Cybertron isn't our planet. We were all just normal high school kids once. Our biggest worry was not spending lunchtime eating alone, and trying to ace Mr. Collins math tests. We didn't always know anything about robotic alien warfare, or the history of a planet light years away. We did normal things. I just think our lives could have been different if they had just stayed ordinary."

"Who wants ordinary, Jack?" Miko cried. She nearly jumped to her feet. But made herself stay sitting instead. "Normal is boring. Normal is for people that don't want to be anything more than they always were. People who like the world to be impossibly small. I could never want to be ordinary, and have just some other normal life."

"The bots taught us so much, showed us so many things..." Raf said. "Ratchet is even teaching me their language. And I've learned to work the computers and the ground bridge. I guess that old bot learned from all of us just how much humans can actually help them. I would never wanna be ordinary either."

"My Mom is really not happy or pleased with the Autobots, over their letting a 'con join them," Jack said. He lightly flung another rock. "She's furious at him, and now she's upset with all of them too. She says maybe I should just think about school, keeping my grades up and get into the Military collage of Rhode Island just like I want, and keep up my job so I can save money for school. I think maybe she's right. Maybe this who Cybertron and the Autobots thing is just too big for us. Everything is changing..."

"But you went all the way to Cybertron, Jack," Miko said. She shook her head slightly. Sadly. Suddenly things were not the way she had known then anymore. "You did a great thing. You saved a great leader. One they, and we, all loved."

"Yes, but now Optimus Prime is dead. See what I mean. Everything is changing so fast."

Miko stared at him with tears suddenly filling her eyes. She refused to let a single one of them fall. "We don't know that exactly. We were told he flew into the well of the allspark. But the bots also say they don't know exactly know what that means or what actualy happens now."

"But it's safe to assume..."

"I don't care what's safe to assume!" Miko exclaimed, louder than she planned to. "Ratchet and Arcee have never given up that last shred of hope and I won't either!"

"Jack, just come back with us tonight," Raf said. "It's important. Your Mom didn't say you absolutely can't did she?"

"She didn't say I can't. She just said she's not impressed."

"So come back to the base. The flowers can wait a day can't they."

Jack got to his feet, with Miko doing the same a second behind him. He shook his head. "Sorry, guys. I'm not mad at either of you or anything. I just can't… this isn't going to work. I'll see you again. I'll stop by the base for a bit tomorrow afternoon."

"Okay. I guess I'll let the bots know you might call for a lift."

"You have writing on you," Jack said stupidly. He gestured questioningly toward Miko's left arm, where purple gel pen ink showed under her slightly upturned sleve.

Miko gave a little chuckle and shrugged. "Just a couple of notes… for tonight. I wanna get this right and not forget anything."

"You write it all out in Japanese."

"Of course I did. I can't write English as well as I speak it ya know."

Raf stayed sitting on the ground and for a moment he wore a confused look on his face. Then he just looked sad, as he stood up and reached for the grocery bags. "Miko, we better get going. Smokescreen is waiting..."

"Bye Jack," he said as he picked up a grocery bag.

Miko held the other two in one hand and waved with the other. "Well have fun with the flower thing tonight. Tell your mom hi."

"I will."

Smokescreen started his engine as Raf and Miko jumped inside. This time Raf sat up front, and Miko placed the grocery bags next to her in back, careful not to smash the eggs.

"Did we lose one?" the Autobot asked. He didn't move, obviously waiting for his third passenger.

"Jack's not coming back with us, Smoky," Raf explained. He kept it simple. No long story that may not have been meant to be shared. "He's got stuff to do tonight."

"Hey, you guys okay?" Smokescreen questioned as he backed himself out of the stall and turned slowly onto main-street.

"Just fine," Raf said, but Miko was quiet.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes/ This chapter took me a while to write, because honestly I had a bit of trouble writing it. It's a bit emotionally all over the place again, and while I like writing those and I think you like reading them, it was hard to get it right, and to get the right feel to it that it needed.**

 **I am nearing the end of this story. A few more chapters and it should be done. It's all falling into p[lace. I already have the end in mind. From here on I tend to think it'll be pretty serious chapters and less of the fluffy stuff.**

 **I'm already cooking up a few ideas for a couple of shorter stories, still within the transformers fandom, because I'm liking writing this and I want to write more for the characters. And thanks a ton tot he readers and reviewers who have stuck with this so far. Any typos in here I'm really sorry about. I'm planning to get this up, before I leave for work today.**

 _"I… I dunno what to do, Boss."_

 _Breakdown wasn't stupid. Knockout knew that even when it so often seemed less than obvious to certain others on board. But he was starting to panic. He always did seem to doubt himself when he did that._

 _"You need to grab my scanner," Knockout waved a shaky hand roughly toward a work table nearly, on which he'd tossed the device sometime earlier. Give him the first step and he'd remember the next one, and the after that._

 _"Scanner… right..." the big blue bot was trying. He grabbed the thing and hurried back. "Readings stable. Moderate fuel loss…." He dropped the med-scanner to the floor, moved to retrieve it and then obviously decided quite wisely not the bother about it that second. "Badly leaking fuel line under the left chest-plate. I need to… repair the line."_

 _Knockout might have laughed in so many other, less dangerous or pressing situations. He might have poked a little bit of fun at his friend. The shaking doubt in the voice of such a big bot, so great at doing damage, might have made him laugh. It had so many times before. But instead of laughing this time, he only looked at him and nodded that he was right._

 _"You've done such a job before." Speaking coherently was becoming hard to do._

 _"Never anyone that was not already an unconscious scrap heap," Breakdown said. He began to rummage through a nearby drawer and the wrong one at that. He could not have possibly been looking for intake tubing, circuitry wiring or compression bandages. And he was also making a mess of the work station. Knockout felt like he would like to laughed again if he could have. Now he knew exactly why his medbay was so often in disarray not long after he'd reorganized it. He'd figured._

" _Never anyone I actually care about and need to live."_

 _"Don't let anyone on this ship hear you say that," Knockout said. He gestured weakly toward the top drawer and breakdown took the hint at once, yanking it open to find a welder and sealant. "If anyone actually knew the big mean brute of the bot had feelings..."_

 _Breakdown gave a clearly nervous laugh. "Hand me your right arm for a second, Boss. Okay, deactivating the pain sensory circuits."_

 _"Good job Breakdown. And please stop calling me boss. You always do that when you panic in here."_

 _"Yeah… I guess I do." Breakdown had already begun to remove part of the front panel. Good call he'd made own his own. He'd never have been able to make the repair otherwise and he knew that._

 _"So I guess that commander of of ours must really be out for a good slugging match today. I never got what exactly that guy's problem is. Head shoved too far up a certain part of his body I tell ya…. What did you do anyway? That is if you feel like sharing a good story that is." Breakdown was rambling a bit, but he was putting to good use the trick of conversation to keep a patient awake and paying attention. So he had been paying attention all those years…_

 _"'Scream and I had a slight disagreement about the handing of an Autobot prisoner," Knockout explained, speaking quietly. He would have made his own conscious patents try talking to him, but he was learning now that it was harder than it looked._

 _"I think I totaled the paint on your panel,"_

 _"You can repaint for me later. And buff and detail. I trust you with my paint and finish."_

 _"'Kay, Boss…. Err Knockout."_

 _"Do you ever think about running away from here?" Knockout blurted out the question without thinking, but his friend only tipped his big head slightly to one side and looked confused._

 _"You wanna run away from the 'cons?" Ah, well that took him at last a minute to work out. But to his credit he did keep his voice down to almost a whisper._

 _"You can never tell anyone… I've even had such thoughts..."_

 _"I would never. But really, don't run off. I mean, what would you do… defect to the Autobot side?"_

 _"Yeah, I guess that is a pretty stupid thought," Knockout gave a nervous laugh as his friend reattached his panel._

Knockout woke up to find himself laying awkwardly on top his recharge station, with a data pad shoved painfully partly underneath the right side of his body, and his right leg flung over the side and nearly touching the floor. He tried to remember what he'd been reading, and could not recall. But he knew he had obviously fallen into recharge reading it. He grabbed the pad and moved it to the little shelf just within reach. But he didn't bother to get up. His sense of time told him it was early in the afternoon, and he knew the last thing he should be doing was napping away, but Knockout was far beyond exhausted from lack of any decent recharge in weeks and at least the last memory that had come to him while resting had not been nightmarish. He found a far more comfortable position and let himself lightly power down again. It was only early afternoon and the place was quiet. He wouldn't rest for too long.

 _"Knockout," Starscream's voice boomed over the comm system inside the medbay, "Do be so kind as to grace me with your presence on the surface at once. Soundwave will get your a bridge to our co-ordainates."_

 _"Commander, I am in the middle of my work here." Knockout was flat lying and he feared anyone that matter would have known it. But he tried it anyway. He stared around his empty bay, before wondering close to a window to look down at the Earth below. The ship was above the dessert lands of America again. There were no known energon mines left in the region. His spark started to sink and fast. Something big was going down. He could sense it. And he knew he didn't exactly like this._

 _"Knockout," Starscream practically yelled over the commlink. "I said now, and I don't think you want me to repeat myself again. Now, go get that ground-bridge."_

 _It could not been been only in his own imagination that Starscream had grown far more demanding and entirely obnoxious lately. Oh he had most certainly always been spoiled and ridiculous, and the crew had never exactly been silent about thinking so. But lately the commander had entirely stopped appearing almost proud of it. Instead it only made him angrier than ever._

 _"You're going to love this, Knockout," the commander said, now calmer and clearly amused with himself. "We are going to have a little fun, and we want you to play the game too."_

 _"Alright, alright, I'm coming. Send the ground-bridge."_

 _Knockout stepped out of the bridge somewhere outside a dessert town. For a moment he could only stare half blankly at the scene in front of him, not quite registering what it was he was seeing. Then it all clicked and he forced his face-plate into a blank expression, as his fuel tank flipped horribly._

 _Megatran and Soundwave stood on either side of a widely grinning Starscream. Soundwave and Starscream each held in their hands one of the child partner's of the Autobots, well sealed into clear containers. Starscream grated one finger against the glass of of the one he held, and probably for no real reason but to make the horrible noise on purpose. The third child, the human female, sat helpless in her own little glass prison, on the ground between the officers and the still open bridge._

 _"You were a bit late to the party, Knockout," Starscream said, still not even bothering to hide his pride in the whole set up. "Soundwave and I already picked out our humans. That leaves you with the little female. I hope you don't mind."_

 _Knockout stepped forward in two long paces and snatched up the girl. She was was half conscious inside the container, clearly regaining awareness after it was recently taken from her. At a quick glance the two boys were little better. The small one might just have been worse._

 _"I must say, I am quite impressed with my second in command for once," Megatron's voice made him look away from the children and up to his leader. "Starscream actually thought up a plan that might actually work. Haul the Autobot's little pets to Cybertron. If I know Prime, he can't not give us back those keys then."_

 _"He'd never let us kill these kids," Starsceam was laughing almost hysterically while he spoke. Clearly he was enjoying having finally gotten something right. He must have loved the acknowledgment._

 _"You let me and my friends ouuta here, you big 'con bullies." The human in the container he held shouted, banging on the glass. In their own containers, held by his team mates the two boys were quieter. One was still barely awake and the other was quiet clearly thinking hard._

 _"Let me pull them out of these for a moment," Knockout said. "The small one doesn't look so good, and I'd like make a quick assessment of all three."_

 _"Typical of a medic," Starscream growled. "One might think you actually cared about these kids." Knockout felt Starscream and Megatron both boring holes through him with their gazes. "Please tell me you don't… actually… care..."_

 _"If he's gone compassionate and weak on us, pleeease my lord tell me I can finish him myself," Starscream went on, now begging pathetically._

 _Megatron only shrugged at that and stepped forward, clearly meaning to lead the group on. "If he blows this one, Starscream, I assure you, he's all yours."_

 _The child inside the container Knockout held had stopped her bold and furious shouting, and slumped against there bottom of the container as it was carried with her inside. He held it higher, trying in vain to get a halfway decent look at her. But all he saw were the tears streaking down her face._

"I'm so sorry little Miko," he heard himself say out loud, in a strange state of half wakefulness. His own voice startled him, and he opened his optics to stare up at that now familiar ceiling of the Autobot's Earth base. He tried to pull himself up to sitting, felt the tears of shame and guilt and rage, on his faceplate. But he was so tired. His processor was banging inside his head, and the ceiling appeared to wave and ripple slightly above him. He only drifted right back into a power down, all the while thinking of getting up instead.

 _Knockout felt his head bounce off the metal floor, before he knew he had even fallen. He was dragged roughly to his feet within a second and with the room still spinning fast around him. He raised his arms to protect himself, but that did little against the hard punches that followed in rapid secession. The shooting pain jolting through his lower arm, told him that a wrist joint was more than likely busted apart entirely. And that was only from the futile try at blocking hits._

 _He felt himself fall again, shove hard toward the floor face first, and he readied himself for the impact. But a rough grip snatched him up by the right arm hard and quick before he finished falling. The motion almost yanked his shoulder from its socket. He fought back a cry, as a new pain spread though his arm and the left side of his body. He looked around past the stead stream of leaking energon that poured into his optics, searching for a way out. The door was too far. He knew that he'd only be snatched backward before he could possibly make the dash across to it. And anyway his arm was still being held firmly and far too hard. More punches, and a couple of kicks. He couldn't even think of defending himself._

 _"Answer the question, Knockout," the demand was little more than a loud and furious growl._

 _"I'm.. I… I'm sorry.. my…. My lord. I don't know..."_

 _"You worthless waste of space, heap of scrap, medic," Megatron roared with the rage he had a well earned reputation for. "Surely you know the answer to the question. Why did you do it, Knockout?" More punches, and when he fell to the floor, this time allowed to land on his knees, several brutal and rough kicks followed._

 _"I await your answer, medic," More kicks, and finally energon poured from Knockout's mouth. He felt it dripping._

 _"I can't give you an answer my lord, because I don't know what I did!" He cried tears of desperation and humiliation. He couldn't make himself stop. "Please, stop this. You… need me… I'm… I'm still useful… to the cause..."_

 _"Yes Knockout. About as useful as rust in the vents." Hard hits, harder kicks and his master's laughter were all that followed._

 _Knockout knew well, Megatron's reputation for violence against his own crew. He had always been lucky enough to avoid more than a slight hint of it, hiding out most often as he did, working in the medbay. But there had always been a steady number injuries landing in his bay, that would have many any observant bot nervous. It was obvious that physical assault was to blame for too many of them, and very few if any such thing had much at all to do with Autobots, or simple accidents in the training gym. He knew full well that Starscream was far too often on the receiving end of it. His medical files more than supported the constantly spreading rumors. But the second in command would surely have killed anyone that dared to approach him about it. He could be almost as brutal and violent against the crew himself. It so often seemed perfectly clear that the harder Starscream was beaten up on, the harder he would beat up on the crew himself._

 _But Starscream was long gone, and had been for a while. Presumably in hiding somewhere on the planet Earth, and with a kill on sight order on his head. And Knockout knew with growing dread, that he was quite clearly among the troops that would become new targets for their lord and master's rage now._

 _Somewhere behind them, a heavy table was knocked over, and the noise of bencding metal was followed at once by some loud and ridiculous insistence that it was somehow Knock's fault the thing had fallen over. If only he hadn't messed up, if only he hadn't ignited the master's anger nothing would have been bumped and fallen. Another crash from an object, this one quite obviously thrown at a far off wall._

 _More punches and these were harder and faster than ever. The room spun faster, and the scene faded from full vivid colors to bright white to nothing and back again. On some level Knockout hoped he would die, beaten to death and free of a life that had been a nightmare for as long as he knew. But on some other level he needed to live, needed to save himself._

"Please stop," he screamed. "I don't understand what I did wrong. Please!"

He was awake on top of his recharge station, and he could see the ceiling above him again. But still he shook and trembled, and forced back another begging scream, more than aware that he'd started to scream out loud again.

"Knockout, can I please come in there?" a voice from outside the door made him want to turn to look for it. But he only stared at he ceiling still shaking hard, and sure that no matter what he was seeing above him, another hit or five were sure to come any second. His optics blinked in and out of fucous. He saw reality, he saw the flashback images again and he saw nothing at all. It all came and went again rapidly until he was dizzy and crying and shaking harder while he question what was real.

"Hey listen. Your door is not locked. I'm going to come in there, okay?" A female voice. A familiar Autobot. Knockout mumbled permission, without knowing if she heard anything but nonsense. With his optics only partly seeing anything real, he saw Arcee walk into the room quickly, but felt rather than saw her sit on the edge of the recharge station.

"You okay?"

He heard the questionand understood it, but still it took a moment before he gave an answer. "I'm alright. I… just dozed off reading and I guess I had a terrible dream."

"Wanna talk about it?" He sat up with more trouble then he knew simple disorientation from a dream should have caused. He moved to sit beside her, as she asked her question.

"I wouldn't even know where to begin to explain it all," he looked at around the room, feeling slightly better, and yet not quite right at all.

"Well if you ever feel like talking any of us can at least listen."

"I know. And thanks."

"The kids should be back soon." Arcee laughed a little. "Apparently Miko brought some movies with her from home, and her and Bulk' are hosting a Japanese horror film marathon tonight. Do you actually even watch movies?"

"I do. I used to like the drive-in. I notice though that movies are most often completely unrealistic."

"I think that's part of the point. Humans enjoy escaping into fantasies of the impossible. The perfect romance, super powers, meeting the stuff of nightmares and surviving with barely a scratch. The list just goes on."

Knockout laughed, and then he changed the subject abruptly. "Why were you at my door?"

"I was about to knock on it," Arcee answered simply. "I came to find you. Ratchet sent me. But I heard screaming and you didn't sound too good..."

"I'm sorry..."

"Don't be sorry. Never be sorry for anything like that. It's hardly your fault."

"Did Ratchet say what he wanted?"

"He said he wanted to..." Arcee's words disappeared into nothing, as Knockout processor began to ring for a moment at a high pitch. Then the ringing gave way to more hard and painful banging.

"You sure you're alright?" Arcee questioned. The pain was gone as fast as it had come and he nodded, forcing a smile onto his face-plate.

"Fine, fine. I was just… I think the nightmares still have me a bit distracted… We should get out of here."

Arcee nodded, and offered a hand to pull him to his feet, quite obviously in a way that was both helpful and deliberately silly. Obviously she had bought his excuse, and for that he was relieved. She or any of the bots would only have dragged him to medical if he admitted to unexplained pain, and that was the last place he wanted to be dragged, especially then.

Both of them stepped into the hall and the door banged shut behind them. They stood for a moment exchanging idle chit-chat about nothing, and then laughing a little over a remembered scene from some ridiculous movie both happened to have stumbled across. He felt better and the pain had gone.

"Well, I need to hit the wash station. I think I'm due for some polish too," Arcee said as her laughs died to giggles. She held up an arm, and looked it over. "I'm getting dingy and very scratched up."

"You'd be just as pretty no matter how dull your paint gets," Knockout blurted, barely thinking and still half laughing.

Arcee was about to walk off. Her back was already turned to him. But she whipped around fast to face him again. Her mouth dropped open slightly in a look of surprise and then her face-plate showed as entirely confused.

"Knockout…. What….?"

"I'm simply saying..." he said grinning at her.

"Go on and speak to Ratchet," she said. She shook her head slightly, but otherwise she was clearly choosing to ignore his comment. She smiled at him though for reasons obviously unrelated. "He said something about creating an Autobot symbol for you."

"Really?"

"Its hardly a mandatory step, at least not yet. But if you're ready to change symbols, then… yeah."

She walked away and Knockout stood still for a moment before he turned to walk off toward Ratchet's office. He took a step and his left foot tripped over the right, sending him stumbling. He caught his balance before he fell stupidly to the floor and walked a good ten paces before he realized he'd started to walk in the wrong direction. Slowly, shaking his head to chase away a sense of confusion he knew was not exactly normal, he walked a couple of paces headed the right way, before another pain shot across his processor. He stood in one place, hands pressed against his head, and optics blinking as the room spun a bit. The pain was gone once again as fast as it had appeared, but this time, instead of quickly entirely, better he was left with a steady ache from somewhere inside the circuity within his processor.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

The big doors at the front of the base skid open and Smokescreen roared in, in his vehicle mode. He skidded to a screeching stop in the middle of the open floor of the main level. His doors popped open to deposit human children and grocery bags, before he promptly transformed into his bot mode.

The group of bots that stood or sat around in the room looked from Smokescreen to the children and back again, and then at each other with questioning expressions.

Ratchet finally spoke up, when it seemed clear none of the others were going to. "Hmm…. Have we lost one? Where is Jack?"

Raf wandered off to the kitchenette space with the grocery bags, and left Miko to stand in the midst of huge Autobots with a look on her face somewhere between sad and exasperated. Bulkhead hurried to her, and scooped her up with his hands, placing her on one of his shoulders so she was not looking up at the bots knees.

"Thanks Bulk. Yeah, Jack's not coming. I dunno exactly what his problem is. Well I do know… kinda soft of, I think. But… Hmph, he's just being stupid!" Sitting on her partner, she held her balance perfectly and planted her hands on her hips, while a look of annoyance showed on her face.

"My fault, I fear," Knockout said, from his place, sitting on a bench across the room. He shook his head sadly.

"Oh no, so totally not your fault," Miko said, probably a bit too loud for an indoor space. "You can't go around blaming yourself because humans wanna be dumb! Fine, we will all just have fun without him, and he'll miss movie night! It's gotta be a male thing..."

"Uh Miko," Bulkhead said, with a half confused look on his face-plate, "Almost all of the Autobots are..."

"Yeah, I know that." If it was possible, Miko looked even more exasperated. "But you are Cybertronians. That's different. I'm talking about human boys."

"But I'm..." Raf walked into the room, now minus the grocery bags. Every one of the bots was laughing out loud by that time. Even Ratchet had started to laugh with the group and that was saying a lot. Miko, still sitting on Bulkhead, trying to keep her balance as his frame trembled with laughter, glared from one to the next, the only one in the room clearly not amused.

"Not you either, Raf," she clarified, still far from laughing, even as the younger human joined in. "You're the smart kind of human male."

"Maybe I should call Jack," Arcee mused, when her concern began to overshadow the humor of the moment. "Miko, do you think he's alright?"

"He looked fine to me. He just said something about how everything is changing and nothing is the way it was. I guess he just doesn't like change. Oh and June is a bit upset and he's her son, so… yeah."

"That would explain why Agent Fowler never dropped by yet today..." Arcee mused.

Knockout opened his mouth to speak again, but made no immediate sound. For a long moment he just sat staring at the group and then his human friend, and then finally the floor, still silently.

"Knockout," Bumblebee said, finally speaking up himself. He stood holding Raf in his hands, but gestured to the red bot with his optics. "Don't you dare think this is your problem. I'm sure this will all work itself out."

"Hey, you have an Autobot symbol now!" Miko exclaimed, pointing toward her newest teammate and grinning, as she finally noticed it for the first time. Knockout grinned back.

"That's pretty cool," Raf said. He gestured politely for 'Bee to put him down, and he walked slowly toward the red bot. He paused, standing still, a few paces from the feet of the seated bot, and looked up at him. After a moment he said, his voice still quiet as it had been every other of the few times he'd spoken to him, "I guess if you're really going to be one of the Autobots, I can't just keep being scared of you forever."

"I… think we are all working on… working everything... everything is working out..." Knockout started to answer before his words became strangely a little but confused. His blinked once and then again, obviously trying to shake off the glitch between his processor and vocalizer. "We are all still working everything out."

"You really do want to be an Autobot," he muttered, slowly. It was more than obvious he had until then had his own, probably well to be expected, doubts about the whole matter.

"Yes, I do," Knockout answered. He looked down at the small human, standing still at his feet.

"Isn't it dangerous, braking from the Decepticons?" Raf questioned, seriously.

Knockout said nothing at all for a moment, instead taking a while to consider his answer carefully. For a moment his hand went to the side of his head and blinked his optics again several times. Finally he said, "Defectors, if captured are punished as traitors, and probably killed. I would have been declared an enemy, as soon as I left them. Far more hated than any Autobot. Still though I did what I… did what I.. I had what I did… no, I did what I wanted for a long time."

Bumblebee stepped quickly behind the boy and quickly scooped his little partner up to place him onto his shoulder panel. "We'll just need to keep him from ever getting captured. This is hardly the first time we've had a situation like this. Knockout, are you alright?"

"I'm just fine of course," the red bot answered. He did sound better, his strange vocal glitching resolved. "Just.. having a little trouble forming a sentence today."

"I dunno," Bulkhead said, from across the room. "That sounded pretty bad to me too."

Most of the bots in the room, as well as both of the humans that sat perched on two of them, all turned slowly to look in Ratchet's direction, all asking without speaking a word, what he thought of that. The old medic had been paying attention from the start, and was already on his feet ready to move at any second. Knockout only sat where he was, shaking his head slightly over the whole situation, and staring mostly toward the floor.

"I'm fine," he said, when the old bot walked toward him quickly, the scanner he tended to keep with him in his storage compartment, already in his hand. He waved him off stubbornly with his hand and refused to meet his, or anyone's, optics. "I'm perfectly fine."

Ratchet stood beside Knockout for a moment, shaking his head, and quite obviously looking for anything else that might have been immediately concerning. He put the scanner away and hook his head again, grumbling to himself under his intakes.

"Alright," he announced finally, his tone far from pleased. "Well, you clearly are not having any more glitches at the moment. Although this quite clearly happened for a reason and that is certainly concerning. The only reason I'm not dragging you into the medbay for tests, and ready to tie you up to force your co-operation if necessary, is because of your Autobot initiation, and I know it's important to you."

"Thank you for you're..." Knockout started to say, but Ratchet interrupted him at once with a hand in the air and a firm look across his white face-plate.

"Oh, I'm keeping a close optic on you. I swear to Primus, now I remember why I never exactly liked treating my fellow medics. I can hardly stand a battle of wills with anyone almost as stubborn and determined as myself. Later on, you are getting scanned and assessed and I don't care if you keep on looking better or not!"

"Okay, okay," Knockout waved a hand through the air in a gesture of assent. He gave a nervous chuckle. "You have my willing surrender."

"Thank you," the old medic snapped, his slight amusement now betraying him. "Miko, you ready?"

"You bet," Miko said, with clear excitement. She poked her bot partner gently with her finger once to get his attention. "Goin' down, Bulk'"

As soon as Bulkhead, had set her down on the floor, she ran to the middle of the room, mindful of Bulkhead's large feet as he took a step backward. Knockout nearly stumbled forward, tripping over his own right foot as he stood up from his seat. The same foot nearly came right out from under him once, nearly sending him falling clumsily over as soon as he had taken a few steps.

"I don't like this in the slightest," Ratchet mumbled to Arcee, who stood next to him. He spoke so quietly that only she heard him say anything at all.

"I don't like it either," she whispered back, discretely. "He was not well earlier, to be honest with you. Of course he tried to play it off, and I think he assumes I bought it."

"I should drag him straight to the medbay this instant… if this wasn't so important to him, I swear..."

"Ratchet, do you have any what's the matter with him…?"

"Could be a number of things. Most explanations are simple ones. Let's not worry about anything serious while it isn't."

Miko stood in the middle of the floor, looking up at Knockout, who was of course many times taller than she was. Quickly, and by now happily, and with her earlier outburst of frustration entirely forgotten, she took several steps backwards, simply trying to comfortably look him in the optics. She bumped against Ratchet's foot, and sat down on top of it for a second thinking. She got back up and waked forward again. Knockout had sat down on the floor of the room, as he had been earlier advised to do. When she came closer to him again, he held his hands, out, clearly suggesting a workable idea.

"That'll work," Miko shrugged, hopping on. The rest of the gathered group chuckled along with them both.

The little human sat balancing perfectly held in the palms of the bit bot's hands, spoke up partly from memorized lines, and mostly from the messy notes she'd scribbled in gel pen ink on her arm. "On behalf of the world of Cybertron, nominated by the Autobots to speak on behalf of themselves and their world, I first welcome the new Autobot, designation; Knockout, to the cause of peace and equality among people."

It was all but unnoticed by any of the bots, but the fact that she was obviously reading her notes written in Japanese, while speaking out loud in English, certainly had Raf impressed.

"First, it is asked that you be given a moment to explain, in your own words, why exactly you wish to be an Autobot?"

Knockout had had time to consider his answer well in advance, but still he considered a moment or two. Finally he spoke thoughtfully. "It's been said so often that in war, we must know our enemies. I got to know more and more about mine, and eventually it seemed the more I looked for the control, hunger for power, blood lust, and rage that I was taught to fight against, the more I saw such things in the team I fought for instead. Where I was once taught to see superiority, and pride, instead the more I studied both sides, the more I understood that I and so many more, only lived in constant fear of failure instead. I want to be part of the side on which I might learn something, and far more, might actually save a planet instead of simply helping to further enslave it."

The group of Autobots, along with two humans, listened as she spoke to them. Most of them nodded approval at his explanation. Ratchet still closely observed him, still clearly nervous about the obvious health issue, but when the bot continued to speak clearly, he backed off a bit and simply listened to what he was saying.

Knockout continued on, still considering his words, "Obviously the 'winning team' thing has become somewhat of a running inside joke, as the humans might say. But I think we need to be clear one why it will always be the winner and why that matters do much. Fear, bullying, oppression and worse are never going to get us anywhere and the more I learned that, the more I knew I wanted to fight against such…"

He stopped talking mid-sentence and sat for several seconds, staring straight ahead with a blank look. With a couple of slight blinks and a look of momentary confusion, he started to speak again. "I knew I wanted to fight against such oppression of… such against wanted… wanted to against… no no, wanted to… wanted to… such…"

He sat on the floor, still holding the small human in his hands, and she held on, trying to balance as both hands began to tremble and then shake harder. Knockout opened his mouth to speak again, and instead of any coherent words, his vocalizer only buzzed with static with a changing and strange pitch to it. He moved to lower his hands, trying to set the human onto the floor. Miko could quite safely have climbed down. She had always climbed bots, clambering up and down, using gent metal limbs as hand and foot holds. But she didn't. Instead she just sat where she was, holding her balance as his hands went on trembling and looking at his rapidly blinking optics, and obviously determined to work out how to help.

"Hey," she said, her tone impressively confidant. "Whats the matter? Can you hear me? Can you talk?"

Knockout slightly focused his optics down at the human that still balanced on him. He might have seen her to a point, and it was clear he could hear her, but his gaze was still clearly focused mostly on nothing at all, and went straight back to starring straight ahead again. He opened his mouth to speak again and there was only more static. This time the noise eventually ended in a terrible shriek that could only have been pain and probably panic. His optics opened in terror as he tried to speak again, never one to give up trying to do anything, and only produced more awful noise.

"Miko!" Ratchet almost yelled at the human, without meaning to shout. "Get down onto the floor. And step way back. Now." He ran forward a step, a hand already outstretched and ready to snatch up the human.

"Ratchet," Miko questioned, her own voice shaking. "What's the mater with him? I don't think this is another panic attack."

"It isn't," the old medic answered fast, already thinking of ten things at once, and ready to start issuing orders when needed. "Miko, are you able to get down?"

"Yeah," she answered, as she turned to climb down fast.

If Knockout had only stayed on the floor in his seated position, the situation would have been as close to ideal as anyone could have gotten in such a situation. But clearly he was beginning to panic. He screamed in what could only have been complete terror at something he was no longer in a state to understand. Static came right behind his horrible screaming, and instead of staying put, he got to his knees. Miko scrambled to get down, meaning to simply hop from his hands and jump to the floor in order to ran backwards fast. But Knockout's hands dropped her before she could jump. She landed on the hard floor backward and with a light thump.

Ratchet stepped forward with a scanner in one hand and the other ready again to grab the human. He could have kicked himself for not just grabbed her fast a second before, but then, any sudden motion might have made everything worse. He reached for Miko, and she scrambled to get up, and she reached for him to scoop her up. Bulkhead had stepped forward by that second, and a couple more bots were slowly following his example. Ratchet held up the hand that held the med scanner. Motioning them back. He knew this whole thing was going to get worse by the second and he simply couldn't work with a tightening crowd.

Ratchet moved to grab Miko, as she scrambled backwards. He waved the group back again. Knockout gave another, much louder scream of horror and this time it was clearly pain too. His hands went to his head, and his optics were entirely unfocused now, while leaking a stream of washer fluid. His whole body shook with increasing force. His integrated weapons activated from both of his hands and any one nearly by could only be thankful that no one had been in the way of either. It was clear he hadn't done that deliberately. It was just as clearly that he lacked any control over deactivating them again.

"I… am… I… what… what… what… help… help me… I… help..." His voice was beginning to work again, though still barely so.. It was at the second that he fell to one side, from his now awkwardly half kneeling position and straight toward the floor. He'd been close enough to the railing for the straits tot he upper level, that his face-plate slammed against it hard as he fell. It was more than enough force to bend the edge of the railing and a growing pool of energon spread from underneath the bots head, as he lay almost face down on the floor.

"Miko!" Bulkhead yelled. He stepped, forward, optics darting from one direction to the next. "Where's Miko gone?"

"I think I saw her run backward," Smokescreen said, trying to be helpful. But his voice was doubtful of what he had seen.

"If she was not able to run clear before..." Bulkhead didn't finish the thought. He didn't need to and there was no time."

"Someone help me, please," Ratchet said. Knockout was silent now and completely unmoving, as the old medic rolled him over to lay face up. The group of Autobot's – and Raf, sitting in Bumblebee's hands and shaking slightly himself – all looked on, barely able to make themselves move.

Knockout's faceplate had been quite clearly smashed by the terrible impact with the railing. He was bleeding badly and his weapons were still activated. There was still no sign of the little human girl.

"Someone look for Miko," Ratchet said, from his position, working down on the floor. "she must have run off somewhere. She's probably upset, but I don't think she got hurt. A couple more of you, come here and help me."

Bulkhead run off at once to find his partner. No one would have expected it to be any different. Arcee joined Ratchet, on the floor ready to be useful. Bumblebee passed Raf over to Smokescreen, and moved to help too. Knockout began to shake and tremble again, and the static was quickly back. Now his right foot kicked against the floor repeatedly, but with varied degrees of force and no clear reason for it.

"Ratchet," Acree questioned, struggling to keep her voice from shaking. The medic had pulled Knockout's arm up, and she took a firm hold of it without needing to be asked. She watched as Ratchet worked, as gently as he could to access a panel and deactivate the weapons system. "What's wrong with him?"

Knockout's blinked opened and closed, and dimmed and brighter again. Barely coherent and gasping in terror he mumbled again, "help... Help me... Help help..."

"It's okay, we're trying to help you," Arcee told him wonder all the while just how much he could understand. "You need to stay calm and let us work, okay."

"I need to make further assessments when we get him to the medbay in a minute,". ratchet told her and anyone else that was listening. "But I believe his processor is badly glitching and is starting to fail."

 **Note/ And… I'm just gonna end this chapter here, because it's already long and because I feel like being one of** _ **those**_ **types again, and ending with a cliff hanger, because I can. Mostly though it's just already long enough and it was due time to hurry and update already. Next one coming soon…**


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes/** **Wow this is a sad chapter. I'll admit I kinda did it on purpose, because I've been in the mood to write sad lately, and it fit. But… yeah…** **Nothing completely disturbing, or graphic or anything like that. Just not a happy chapter.**

 **It's also pretty long again, but sometimes it makes little sense to break them up because of length.**

 **Oh and I spotted mistakes in the last one. Grrr. I'm going back at some point soon to fix it up a bit, because that kind of thing drives me nuts, and I should know better.**

"Help… me.. help… help… help..." Knockout screamed, his vocalizer still badly glitching and his optics wide with complete and utter panic and confusion. He'd been moved quickly into the medbay, but clearly he was unaware of ever having been moved at all.. His voice soon went to static again, but this time it was high pitched and an almost agonizing sound, shrieks of disoriented terror distorting it in the worst of ways. All the while he was constantly trying to either sit up or roll to one side in completely uncoordinated and more than likely not fully intentionally motions. The front of his face-plate, which had been smacked against the railing had almost stopped bleeding on it's own but still it was clearly bad. And more than once, Knockout nearly shoved Ratchet backward frighteningly hard, as the old medic tried urgently to get a good look at the damage.

"Are you going to power him down?" Arcee questioned. The struggling had improved only slightly, and she maintained her hold with difficulty.

"Normally I would," Ratchet answered. "But in this case, it might be unwise. I need more information first. And I don't want to try using any kind of restraint system because that would probably just make him panic even more."There's a good chance he'll snap back out of this again at least for some time."

"What can I do?" Arcee grabbed the red bot's arms and tried her best to gently stop him from his violent struggling.

"Pretty much that," Ratchet turned his back to dig through a drawer of the nearby work table, ignoring an unneeded item that was knocked out of there in the process and landed on the floor.

"Smashed himself up pretty good on that railing," he muttered. "Looks like he's busted part of the panel on the right side. It's a wonder that fall alone didn't knock him senseless." He looked carefully as he could at worst of it, and worked a bit with a cleaning rag and a spray bottle of sanitizing solution. It was likely a combination of the pain it was causing, and just the feeling of wet cleaner that made Knockout scream and shriek even louder, through the static. He fought hard in his state of confused panic, to free himself.

"You're alright, you're alright," Arcee said gently, but loud enough to be heard clearly over the constant static noise. She tried to brace herself leaning quite awkwardly forward, with her feet firm on floor, as he nearly sent her flying back against a work table. "You need to stop fighting, okay? We're trying to help you. You're a bit banged up."

The sound of loud shrieks through a field of static turned to complete silence in a single instant. In the next second the desperate horrible struggling to move ceased too. Arcee saw Knockout's optics dim, brighten, dim slightly again and then close.

"Hopefully he's going to come back around properly for us in a second or two," Ratchet said, as he set down the spray bottle and placed a hand on Knockout's shoulder panel. "We don't want to let him fell into recharge just yet if we can help it. Not until I know he's safe at least for now."

"Stay awake for me for a second," he said, speaking to him now while giving him a gentle shake. "Come on. Can you keep both optics in focus for now? Hey. Look at me."

Knockout's optics opened. The far away look and the panic were all but gone. He focused and he blinked, and then did the same again before just laying still and looking around a bit.

"Very good. Do you know where you are?"

"I dunno..." Knockout mumbled. His didn't sound quite right at all.

"That's okay. We know you can understand me and talk. That's good for now. Do you know what happened?"

"I… dunno… fall down… I…"

"You certainly did. And quite badly too. Think you can hold still for us for a bit so no one needs to keep holding on to your arms like that?"

"I… still… I can… will..."

"He's still so out of it," Arcee said quietly. Her despair and sadness was painfully clear. She let go of his arms, and true to his mumbled words he stayed put.

"He is," Ratchet nodded as he finally found a chance to hook up much required monitoring equipment. "But it's not too bad, considering."

"I... hurt… pain front… wha… wha…?" Knockout mumbled, again still only half coherent. His words were too slow, every syllable dragging on a bit more than they should have.

"You've banged yourself up a bit," Ratchet explained calmly, in answer the question that was clearly intended in the disjointed mumbling. "You smacked your face off the edge of a railing when you fell. I'm just going to turn your head a little to the side, alright?"

"Miko…." Knockout screamed suddenly, and much louder than his mumbling so far had been. As he gained more of his awareness and understanding he understood that she had been sitting in his hands the last he would have known. "Help… help… she… lost..."

"Bulkhead will find Miko," Arcee assured him. "She's okay, she's okay. She just ran somewhere."

"Face… hurt.."

"It will for a bit. You really busted it up good."

"Miko… is okay….?" Now Knockout pulled, with an uncoordinated, waving hand at spark monitor wiring that needed to stay attached. Arcee gently stopped him.

"Ratchet," She questioned, speaking in hushed tones, and torn between needing to know and dreading any answers the old medic might have. "How is everything looking?"

The old bot stared at monitor readouts, and didn't look at her to answer. "His processor is shorting out. Some major connections have been wiped out entirely. More are failing, or are going to. There's a fair chance that if we can keep him laying calmly like this, his body will start to self repair and that may just be enough to fix this. Any more glitches though, like we saw when we brought him in here, and it will only make everything worse instead of better, and it's more than likely that will indeed happen again."

"Any idea how this might have happened? Just this afternoon he was obviously a bit unwell, but nothing that would have made anyone think… We were laughing in the hallway. He'd fallen into recharge in the afternoon, because I guess he was tired. He had nightmares again, woke up screaming. But that's not new..."

"Honestly that may have had something to do with this. It's not exactly common, but it could be that his processor started to short out due in part to extreme emotional strain and a constant state of conflict. Of course there are other factors, including simple bad luck, but it couldn't have helped in the slightest. Then there was that attack on the building site not so long ago. You wouldn't think so, but there might just be a connection. Being targeted like that along with the team would have scared him so badly, and with a processor already under such strain from unresolvable tension… Just being hurt in the first place was starting to trigger flashbacks. I never told you, because I never made much of a connection at the time. I figured he was just a little out of it from pain medication. But he thought I was about to beat on Bulkhead for making too much noise. Like actually physically punish the fellow."

Ratchet stood for a second shaking his head, as pieces of a big and suddenly tragic puzzle clicked firmly into place. "There was so much I missed, and I feel like I should have seen it."

"It wasn't your fault," Arcee said, meaning it. "There was so much we all missed. No one could have known..."

"I want.. need… I do… I… want..." Knockout mumbled. This time neither of the others in the room had any idea what it was he was trying to get across. They looked at each other helplessly and exchanged sad glances. But he had stopped as quickly as he started trying to talk to them, and they could only assume it was never all that important.

Arcee walked back to him in a few quick steps and stood where he could easily look at her. Slowly she asked, "what is it you wanted to tell us? I'm sorry, we can't understand. Do you want to try it again?"

"I want… I dunno… is okay..." He stopped speaking again. One of his hands waved in the air absently in some random direction. She wondered for a moment if he was in fact trying to point or gesture toward something specific, but quickly dismissed that thought when it was obvious he was simply waving toward the furthest wall, and probably didn't realize what he was doing at all.

Near the monitors, Ratchet still stared at readouts, and wondered under this intakes, whether it was urgent or not to attempt a repair in the still very much busted face-plate. On one hand, it was clearly a terrible cause of pain and discomfort and that was all the more reason to fix it quickly. But on the other, it was no longer bleeding. It was simply banged up, however seriously that might have been. And the work needed to fix such a thing could well cause Knockout to panic again, in his still not quite with it state.

There was a sudden knock at the closed door and before either Ratchet could answer it, Wheeljack pushed it open a bit and peeked in around the edge. Speaking quietly he said "Bulk' found Miko outside a while ago. I guess she was on a bench by the parking lot. He's been trying to get her to play a game with Raf, but she won't. She's been asking about Knockout. We didn't want to let her in here because we don't know how bad this is yet ourselves."

"I'll go out to talk to her, and for that matter everyone else," Ratchet said as he stepped through the door. "Arcee, stay and keep an optic on him, will you."

"How are you feeling?" Arcee positioned herself to make sure Knockout could see her while she spoke to him. "Is anything any better?"

He shook his head a little. His hand, the same one as before, started to gesture uselessly toward the side wall again. "No… not any…" He searched for words he should have known at once, and struggled to put them together into sentences that made any sense. "Laying… help… lights bad… brightness..."

"I can dim the lighting in here. That might help a bit. Are you cold?"

Knockout shook his head slightly, before he spoke again. This time his optics locked on hers and his voice, through all the mumbling and confused, dragging words were serious and urgent. "Condition bad… risk… failure… repair systems try fix… if not… I know no… never come back from..."

So he clearly did understand his own condition. Arcee felt her dread rising up though her body as if it was something physical. For all of his confusion, and disoriented detachment from his own sense of self, why did he still have to understand that?

"'S'okay," he mumbled at her, when he saw her dread spread over her face-plate and clearly understood that too. He tired to give her a decent attempt at his so usual smirk of a grin, but it just didn't look anywhere close to it. She wasn't sure if it was his busted up face-plate to blame for it, or his malfunctioning processor. "I'd go… to the allspark. I… I hope not yet… yet but ready… if..."

Arcee patted his shoulder panel gently. "You're being very courageous about this. That's good."

"I try… I am trying…"

"Think you can let us fix up your face-plate in a bit? You aware enough not to panic?"

"I want… fixed..."

The door opened and they both looked toward it, Arcee turning around and Knockout turning his head a little to try glancing toward it. Ratchet walked quickly back into the medbay with Miko walking slowly behind one of his feet. He bent down to lift her up and she looked around nervously. The usually loud and hyper human was perfectly quiet.

"You found… find… you..." Knockout tried to grin at seeing his human friend again, but again the expression just didn't look anywhere close to what it should have been.

"If I'm going to let a little human sit with you, you need to stay still so you don't knock her down," Ratchet said, kindly, but entirely serious all the same.

Miko stayed for a long moment, sitting in Ratchet's hand and smiling nervously. She gave a small wave, but said nothing. Hesitantly she clambered off and inched slowly over the edge of lightly padded repair table, until she finally came to lean lightly against Knockout's arm. All the while she was mindful of the network or monitor wires, and trying not to pull anything loose from anything else.

"Ratchet and 'Bee and a couple of the others were talking out there for a minute," she said, smiling, but still so obviously uncertain of exactly what to say or do with a situation she had never had to learn to deal with before. "They're calling your status within the Autobot ranks official. Knockout, you're an Autobot! Ratchet wanted me to tell you, because of course you'd love to hear that"

When he looked at her, optics open and slightly blinking, but without making a sound, she leaned over a bot to wrap both her arms around one of his gently. In a moment he spoke slowly, as she listened carefully, making sure to catch his words. Ratchet had explained that he could speak well enough, but that it would likely sound a bit strange at first.

"I never… never got to thanks… thanking you Miko,"

"Th… thank me for what?"

"You want to be… be friend. I did so bad… so many bad… you try… you want… anyway to… I… we… I was..." It was far too much for his slowing and faulting processor to put together at once. And to speak in a human language was even more of a challenge on top of just forming a string of important thoughts into a coherent set of words. His optics leaked a small amount of cleaner fluid as he gave up in frustration and fought back his own growing fright at finding himself so helpless to explain something. Miko looked at him, smiling through the tears in her own eyes.

"It's alright, it's alright," she said quietly.

"I… needed… friend. Thank you." Knockout managed slowly, starting over and keeping it so much simpler.

Ratchet set to work, trying to repair Knockout's badly damaged and partly shattered faceplate. It would need to be done at one point or other anyway, Arcee had told him he did want it fixed, and he reasoned that sooner was better than later. He knew his mental state could grow far worse and that might well make such a job harder instead of easier. Arcee stood near a work station, handing him supplies as he asked for them. The place was quiet and the mood sad and serious and low. The monitor beeped and buzzed and lightly whirred away. But such sounds were a good thing. It all meant there was still something to hope for.

Knockout's right hand had come to rest, palm facing up, and Miko slowly let go of his arm so that she could sit beside him and rub her fingertips gently over the metal of his hand. She had been told that he needed to be kept as calm as possible, and she just smiled as she tired her best to help with that task.

"'I'm okay," Knockout mumbled at her "Isnotthurttin' toobad..." Obviously he was beginning to sound far worse. The little human could barely make out his last statement and had to think carefully about what he had said before she realized where the pauses should have been. Ratchet and Arcee exchanged serious looks. They had both heard it too and neither liked it at all. The red bots optics were staring off at nothing again, and his left arm waved in the air aimlessly again, just like before, only new much more forcefully. He nearly struck the side wall with his fingertips. Arcee quickly lifted Miko into her arms and backed up until she could set her down on top of Ratchet's work table in the corner. The little human sat down on edge of it, with her legs dangling over the side, and looked on with fear and dread as the situation began to go bad.

"Knockout!" Ratchet said firmly, as he put down a pair of little pliers he'd been about to use. "Focus back on us. Look at me, please. Come on. Follow my voice and look at me."

The red bot's metal finger tips banged hard against the metallic wall behind him, and scrapped with a terrible noise, before he immediately did it again, until Arcee grabbed his arm. It clearly took some effort to move it to rest beside him, and he nearly scratched the side of her shoulder panel in his half mindless struggle against her.

"I think he's trying to check out on us again," she cried, fighting to keep her voice even.

"He is, and I don't know if we can do much about that," Ratchet answered, speaking quickly as he rummaged through a drawer, close to Miko's feet. "Just let me try something..."

He tried shinning his light close to Knockout's face, but it seemed to only make him panic and look very near to another episode of shrieking terror. He clapped his hands together lightly near the side of his head, and the red bot turned to look for the sound. But he was still staring at nothing, and had actually turned in the wrong direction, away from the sound instead of toward it. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times silently as he tried to talk, but there was no sound. Finally there was a little scream of panic, and then unintelligible mumbling noise, before the static returned.

In was in the midst of that chaos and helplessness that Bumblebee pushed the door open and walked inside the medbay quietly. He stared unblinking for at least a second, his disbelieving shock betraying him, as he realized for the first time himself that the situation had potentially worsened. He collected himself as quickly as he could and without being asked he jumped right in ready to help as needed, ready to receive instruction.

"Miko," he said, with his back to her. "Jack is here. He's looking for you."

"Jack?" Miko snapped out of the horrified shock that began to claim her, and shakily she climbed down to the floor, using huge bot sized drawer handles for foot holds. "Jack came back?"

The human girl found her former classmate and friend, standing around in the middle of the little kitchenette, which happened to be across the common room form the medbay doors, and tucked in beside the steps to the upper level. He bore a look of disbelief, and stared absentmindedly at the bottom of the stair rail. Miko ran across the room in less steps then should have been possible for her hight, and almost flung herself at him. Awkwardly he hugged her and waited for her to say something.

"Jack, what are you doing here? I thought you weren't coming back." She let go of him and stepped back. "Sorry. I just..."

"Agent Fowler had work to do on the base tonight. He brought me back with him. He said I should come back, at least to congratulate Knockout. He said the bot is clearly serous about redemption and all that, and I'll only regret it if good friendships were ruined up because I got angry at someone who only wants to start over. My mom actually kind of agrees with him. But I got in here and Bumblebee said there was an emergency. He said Knockout is hurt or something. He talked so fast and then kinda booked it."

"He could be dying, Jack."

"Whoa. Miko? What?"

They sat down on bottom of the stairs, and for a moment they just looked at each other without saying a word. Finally Miko tried to explain it all without trembling from the shock of the whole evening.

"Ratchet says his processor is basically shorting itself out and shutting itself down, or something like that. It glitched out badly and now it just keeps doing it again. If Ratchet can't fix it, or his body can't fix itself fast enough, he'll just lose functions until his spark dies out."

"Well… Ratchet will fix this..." Jack spoke in a tone that people tended to so often use when they wanted to sound convinced themselves.

"He'll do what he can. Of course he will. Ratchet would never fail any member of his team, if he has any choice in it. He says we need to wait it out a while. See what happens, and he'll decide what to do next, as the situation changes. Which he says it will."

"Miko..." Jack's eyes opened wide in dismay as he listened to her. "This afternoon, before you and Raf came back here without me, I said I think that maybe some bots are better off dying, meaning of course that bot… I didn't think anything like this could happen, then."

"Can we take a walk? I wanna go outside for a bit."

It was getting late, and growing dark outside. The flood lights that sounded the military base, were already lit, and shinning over the high chain-link fence. Miko shivered slightly in the cooling air of the Nevada dessert's early summer, as the two of them walked the path that led around to the back of the main hanger.

"You didn't know," she said in response to Jack's last regretful comment. "Nobody knew. I guess this is just kind of a freak thing that almost never happens to any bot. It's so uncommon that even Ratchet is a bit stumped on what to actually do that might do any good."

"Okay, so worst case here, how long would he…?" Jack didn't finish the question, but Miko nodded understanding anyway.

She filled in the blank herself, as part of an answer. "How long would he live? Maybe a couple of days, apparently. But half that time at least he'd be pretty well sleeping, and with so little left of who he was, until finally the lights just go out."

"The railing to the stairs..." Jack changed the subject slightly, and Miko was almost glad of it.

"Yeah. It's a bit busted. Knockout fell against the railing. It was built for a bot be able to safely lean on it, so yeah, very heavy duty rail. His face is pretty beaten up, but I guess that's nothing in perspective, right?"

"I never think of a bot getting sick, or anything like this," Jack commented. "We've all seen them get hurt, and we know they can die, but this sounds so human."

Miko shrugged. "I guess it is, kinda. We have brains, they have processors. But I guess it's about the same if either decides to mess up on you."

"Where's Raf?"

"I'm not sure. I should know I guess, but I just lost track of him. Actually I don't know where all the bots went either. I would think Raf went with them."

"I'm gonna text him. Let him know I'm back."

"Okay."

"We should get back inside. We'll make some hot chocolate or something. We have those cinnamon buns too."

"I could go for both of those things."

Raf wandered inside as Jack took the kettle off the top of the hotplate on the kitchen counter. Miko added a third cup to the two that were already sitting out ready for use. All three of the young humans went back to sit on the stairs, each with a brightly colored steaming mug. Miko set a plate of sticky cinnamon buns between them on the second step. Raf, sitting up on the forth step, and reaching down to grab one of the treats, opened his laptop. Balancing it on his knees, he typed on it's keys, somehow without it getting sticky.

"Ratchet has me on research duty," he explained, with half a mouthful. "He said find anything I can, that anyone's ever learned about anything from human brain damage, to computer system circuit failure. Ya never know what might be useful, right?"

"I wanna call my mom," Jack said. "It's a long shot. Her patients are humans obviously. But still she might have some idea, something for Ratchet to work with."

"Aren't you and your mom both angry?" Raf asked while typing. It was unclear while he talked with his mouth full again, if his tone held any contempt or not.

"We were," Jack admitted. His own tone again regretful. "But I think she's rethinking things, and I think I might really have screwed up."

"Miko," Arcee's voice speaking from the middle of the room made the little human female look up. She wondered how it was she had not even heard a pair of metal feet walking across the floor. But then it did seem like the others hadn't noticed either. "There you are. Knockout is asking repeatedly if you are coming back. I told him I would see if you would. You don't have to..."

"So, Ratchet was able to get him back where he was again?"

"Well stable again for now. And responsive and alert. But he's not where he was, no. The glitches will just keep making it worse most likely. He's talking, but not well. Miko if you don't want to deal with this, I can tell him I decided not to let you. Let him think it was my doing… maybe that's best."

Miko got to her feet. "I… I don't know. Maybe I wanna remember him as the 'con that ran toward a better way. The street racer, the medic. Maybe I wanna remember how he talked to me on the roof of the base about how he had big dreams before he joined the war… He was so happy to be an Autobot."

"It's still hopeful," Arcee said as she kneeled on the floor to talk with the tiny human "His system is still not self repairing, but Ratchet is now pretty convinced he can repair him. The scans are indicating wiring glitches, and wiring is replaceable. So is circuitry."

"Ratchet can do bot brain surgery?" the little human's tone was a mix of impressed, amused and anxious.

"Maybe," Arcee answered. "He wants to put Knockout into compete power down within a couple hours… exactly what we were trying not to do earlier, but things have changed. He needs to avoid any more glitches and that's the best way to do that. He'll be left in power down while his systems have one final go at self repairing, and until the manual repairs are done."

"He might not wake up?" Miko's question was more of a statement of understanding more than a real question. Acree nodded sadly, but said nothing.

"Miko, you're his friend," Raf said. "If the worst case happens, and I hope it doesn't, you'd regret it if you never said good bye."

"You're right," Miko sighed and hugged Acree's knees. She looked back at the boys. "Are you guys going to come and talk to him too?"

"In a little bit," Raf said, while Jack nodded.

As soon as Arcee lifted her back up there, Miko sat on the edge of the repair table inside the medbay, with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head resting on her elbows. She looked at Knockout's open optics, as he blinked silently and gazed rapidly around with a look that would only have been growing fright. She wanted to talk to him again, but she didn't know what to say. She didn't what he'd sound like when he answered back, though she knew he would try to answer her. She remembered that he'd talked to her when it seemed he didn't feel safe talking to anyone else. A thought formed in her mind, and though it seemed so silly, so irreverent and so ridiculous a thing to say then, she began to speak anyway, because it seemed right and she'd somehow said the right things before when she'd barely been trying.

"Hey Doc Knock. So I guess it's been quite the last few days. Feels like longer than that. I didn't think I'd ever be your friend, but here we are. Last time I saw you before Cybertron was restored, you were still just one of the bad guys. Then I came back to visit and you came with the Autobots, and you were on our side. And I saw you had hopes and dreams, and you were funny, and lonely, and lost... I think that was three days ago."

She carefully wiggled over a bit and even more carefully she leaned against him. She was pretty sure there ware more wires than before to not pull on, and she was pretty such he wasn't moving either, not that he had much before. She thought he had heard her and she was sure he could probably understand her still, but he didn't speak to her. She'd been so sure he would. Miko looked at his optics again. Suddenly she strangely felt herself smile slightly at realized just how much a pair of red optics on an Autobot would stand out in their group pictures. She remembered the same pair of red optics staring at her through the glass of a container, and she could almost not believe they belonged to the same bot. She wondered if what she had seen that day, for a tiny fleeting second, had been remorse and regret, or if she had only began to imagine that in the past days because he'd been so clearly sorry.

"Yuwertoo," Knockout spoke at nearly a whisper under his intakes. But what he'd said – or tried to say – had made no sense. It wasn't a word. Or was it? She thought hard, determined to make it make sense, because she knew he was trying. A short sentence, so badly blended together that was was hardly language at all. _You were too._ Yes that was it.

"I was what, Knockout?" She asked, and she waited. Nearby she saw Ratchet and Arcee smile slightly at each other. 'Bee nodded at her very slightly. She could only assume then that she was doing the right thing.

"Funnylonelylost," came another half way to mangled little sentence. _Funny, lonely and lost._ He meant he'd thought she was like him. That was why he trusted her over anyone else.

"Hey, Knockout," Arcee said, approaching him from the right side. She bent down a little to talk to him gently. "You really need to refuel. Do you think you can drink?"

"Idunno..." He shook his head.

"Can you try? Please?"

Another little shake of his head. Bumblebee handed her an energon container anyway, so that she could offer it to him. She slid and arm under his head in order to sit him up a bit, and he stayed in that position without any fuss at all. In fact, he looked around a bit more and probably even liked being up a little. But he didn't drink when she held the container to his mouth. He wasn't even trying. Ratchet was so well known for putting quick stop to any patient stubbornness in his medbay. But this time it was little Miko that took care of that before he could even think to. The old medic exchanged a look with Bumblebee, of something pretty close to amazement, as the tiny human glared at Knockout with her eyes narrowing slightly and barely blinking. Without a word she gave a perfect message of _don't you dare try me,_ to a huge Cybertronian big enough to carry her without a thought, in one hand.

Knockout slowly tried to take a couple of sips from the container. He refused anymore, with more head shaking, but at least he had tried a tiny bit. Arcee chuckled slightly, and gave Miko a look of thanks. She offered the container again, but this time Knockout only shook his head in refusal and it didn't matter that the little human glared at him again. Ratchet reached out to take a container from her. He set it down on top of the work table behind him.

"I'll need to hook him up to energon lines eventually anyway," he said. He was clearly saddened, under his professional tone. He turned to yank open a drawer and rummaged around for equipment. "Might as well be sooner than later."

Bulkhead stepped inside the room, for a moment he simply stared around in obvious shock at just how bad everything looked. He'd known it would of course, but to know and to see first hand were always two very different things. Miko carefully made her way back over toward him, and clambered onto his hand, so that he could put her back up on his shoulder. She sat still, leaning her head against the side of his, and remembered that the newest of the Autobots still had a fair chance left.

Bulk' mumbled a greeting because he knew Knockout could understand even if he choose not to answer back, which he didn't. The big green bot went on talk for a minute or two, mostly joking about how if Knockout could truly handle chasing after Miko, then he was thankful for the help he'd provided in keeping track of her the last few days. But Bulkhead never had been one for any real talent in conversation. He much preferred loud heavy metal and smashing things, to idly chit-chatting with anybody.

Smokescreen stepped in not five minutes later. Both Raf and Jack rode on his shoulder panel, and the bot and both humans looked edgy and scared as soon as they had stepped in. The bot backed up to stand by the wall. Clearly he'd practically forced himself to visit, and just as clearly he was about to run off again. Somehow anything involving a bot in a medical situation still triggered a need to run as far away as he could get.

Smokescreen waved a silent greeting, much like Bulkhead had done. Knockout had turned his head slightly to see who had come into the room. He actually laughed slightly, and rolled his optics a tiny bit. It made other smile slightly, but it took anyone a second to realize it was a good natured try at reacting to the dreadful look on Smokescreen's face-plate.

"Ah come on," Smokescreen said, grinning. The humans that sat on top of his shoulder panel laughed a little too.

"You and Miko are the ones that managed to make him laugh, Smoky," Arcee said. She was entirely serious, but smiling too.

"Hi," Raf said to the red bot, from his place still on Smokescreen's shoulder. For a second or two it looked like he might say more, but he didn't.

"I never got to say sorry to you for the rude attitude since we all met up the other day," Jack said. "I don't know if you can understand it now, but sorry for just plain being judgmental and rotten about everything. I guess I think sometimes I know it all. Just like my father apparently. That man knew how to hold a grudge or so my Mom says. And I guess I do too."

"Of course he can understand you, Jack," Arcee said. She stepped closer for a moment. "He can comprehend far more than he can say. And in any case, he probably just doesn't feel like talking anymore. It's not that he can't at all." Her last comment was directed to anyone that was listening, and they all nodded their understanding.

"I want to go..." Raf said quietly, after a moment or two during which no one said anything at all. He sounded entirely uneasy in the situation, and no one could think of a reason to blame him. He was still almost a little kid. Jack nodded his agreement in the next second.

Ratchet nodded his understanding. "Smokescreen, why don't you go and play with the children somewhere." He'd obviously managed that way to let the very uneasy bot off as well with that. The poor Autobot could barely follow his suggestion quickly enough. Though he did look regretful all the same.

Bulkhead sat down on the bench along the far wall, ready to help if needed, but still for the most part out of anyone's way. Miko got down from his shoulder, half climbing and half sliding down one of his arms carefully. She sat herself down again, this time on one of his hands that rested in his lap, and showed no intention at all, of leaving to play with the boys. For a while nothing much happened, and nobody said anything at all. 'Bee and Arcee stood around waiting nervously for the next bad thing they knew was probably inevitable now. Ratchet gathered up supplies, and probably things he would probably not need, just in case he did need them. Bulkhead sat waiting to be useful, and Miko sat on him and just watched everything with both curiosity and concern.

"Hey where's Wheeljack?" Miko asked, after a while, and realizing someone was missing.

"Oh," Bulkhead said. "Wheeljack is at the main comm. There was a call to the base back home, but I guess it was rerouted here. Looks like we've got another ship inbound for Cybertron. Autobot officer flying in another group of refugees. So he's busy on the commlink takin' to the bot on the ship. He's promised construction jobs to any that want them. I guess we'll have help when we get back to work up there ourselves. Thanks for askin', Miko."

Others in the room exchanged excited grins and shoulder claps. In the midst of a very bad day, it looked as though some great good might still exist, and the news of more returning, served well to boots the spirits of everything present.

"Who is this Autobot officer?" Bumblebee asked from his place near the monitor. He ahdn;t said much for a while, simply waiting to be needed, and hoping nothing would happen soon to make it so. But now he joined in the conversation. "Is it anyone I know?"

Bulk' shrugged slightly being careful not to roughly jostle Miko. "Some bot called Drift."

Ratchet's optics lit up slightly at the name. "I wondered where he got too. I worked with him for a while, ages back. It's pretty common knowledge from the records, that he switched sides, came to serve our cause, and never looked back."

"Another 'con defector?" Arcee was suddenly excited at the thought of how much help this new returning bot could eventually be to Knockout, who was still confused over so much.

The talk about the returning ship, inevitably led to idle talk about home and the work they had taken their very short break from. They small group got to chit-chatting quietly about work and projects, and so many things they looked forward to rebuilding.

Knockout gave a clear look of understanding, but he still didn't even try to talk to anyone. Most of them wished that he would talk to them again. Any of them would have patiently listened and at least tried to grasp his failing language, but no one was going to insistently push the matter either. He may not have been talking, but he did clearly enjoy listening to them anyway. The bots went on conversing, and once they even had a small spell of laughter at something Bulkhead said, without meaning for it to be all that funny.

"Ratchet!" Miko cried, suddenly, over the otherwise relatively quiet voices. The medic had been readying tools for later use, and he dropped a complex tool he was holding his his hand about to place onto a work table. It looked for a fleeting second, like he might just shout at her, as he so often would have, warning her against scaring an old bot like that, or shouting loudly and suddenly in the medbay. But he caught himself in under a second. If she was screaming at him now there was a reason. The old medic did not even look over at the human to ask why had called him like that. Instead he looked straight at his patient because that made far more sense at the moment.

Knockout's optics had begun to blink again, so clearly in and out of focus, as she tried clearly so much harder this time to actually hold his gaze on the room and not lose it again. His right foot tried to kick itself backward as it had much earlier on. Both his hands started to tremble horribly and his optics quickly began to close only to snap open again fast and with force, like someone determined for any reason not to fall asleep in a body clearly determined to do so against his will. His arm and hand were not scraping against the wall this time, or even reaching back awkwardly behind him, but his face had taken on a horrid look of utter and complete terror and dread, as he blinked again.

Ratchet was close beside him in under another second, arms out ready for anything, and optics glancing around ready to give orders. "Thank you, Miko. Scrap, we need this now like we need mud in the air vents."

Knockout strangely choose that moment to speak again after a perfectly silent hour. He was barely conscious and his words were so mumbled and mangled that It sounded like mostly only gibberish noise. The static was returning too, triggered by an attempt at speech, but at least he wasn't screaming again. Arcee was close to his head and listening closely, trying hard to understand him, because the look on his face-plate said it might have mattered.

"W… what did he say?" Miko asked, so quiet she was barely heard at all.

"He said he's scared," Arcee said without looking away, ready to grab him again if she needed to. "He's so frightened. I think he's conscious of what's happening to him while his processor glitches like this."

"That's entirely possible," Ratchet answered fast, "Arcee just try to hold onto him a bit, but be careful of the monitor wires. Don't be alarmed if he tries to grab onto you pretty hard."

Arcee nodded slowly. Her expression was calm, but her optics were wider than usual. She moved to try to follow Ratchet's direction.

"Hey," Ratchet said, speaking to his patient slowly and evenly over the slight sound of vocalizer static. "We are all still here, okay? This should be over in a couple of minutes. Just focus on taking some nice slow intakes and keep on listening to me, alright. Don't you worry, I'm not going to shine anymore lights at you. I don't know what the view looks like to you, but you go ahead and close your optics for a minute if that's helpful, okay."

"You're nice and calm this time," Arcee said quietly to him, when Ratchet had stopped speaking. She just leaned over him, her arms draped over him lightly and let him hold tightly to one of her arms to reassure himself. "Don't be afraid. You're alright."

Little Miko turned herself from her position still sitting on her bot partner, so that she could face backward and hide her face against his front plating. But she didn't get down and run away.

Knockout came back from the glitching again, but this time a return to any normal state of consciousness was slower and he probably never fully did at all. For several long and dragging minutes, he just layer exactly where he had ended up, arms flopped to his sides, and one in a way that could not possibly have been very comfortable at all. His optics, which he had let shut a moment before, snapped open again, and he did appear to see Arcee and Ratchet, standing closest to him just fine. But there was barely a reaction or acknowledgment. Arcee had almost hoped he'd show at least a little resistance when she stood up and took a step back from him, but there was none at all.

"Ratchet," she said, trying to keep her voice even. "He's not looking good."

Mumbling his agreement with the bad news under his intakes, Ratchet grabbed a scanner, while starting for a long moment at monitor readouts. No point anymore in even trying to give Knockout any commands, however simple they might have been. It was obviously he would not be able to follow them anyway. So he just scanned him and left it at that.

"This is happening too fast," the old medic muttered out loud. "The processor is shutting itself down faster than I had hoped for, and with it every vital function is shutting down too. I'm going to power him down now."

"Does he still have a chance, then?"

"If I'm honest, Arcee, I don't know." The old medic looked at her with a look of determination she had seen so many times, and yet sometimes it still almost scared her. The look that just dared fate itself to let him fail, and find out what it would get for trying him. "But how can I give up without a good try. He's come too far, survived too much, wanted redemption too bad, for me just to let his lights go out."

Arcee nodded. Bulkhead and Bumblebee immediately did the same. They all knew how far he'd go to do the same for any Autobot. They all knew he had. They'd all seem him do it time and again.


	13. Chapter 13

**Note/ Hmmm…. Well this is a strange chapter. Not sure why I wrote it like this exactly but lets see how this goes, hey?**

 **Thanks again to those still reading and reviewing. I'm still quite amazed by that, and the comments are making my days. There was a guess reviewer that left a very long review on chapter 12, and I felt like I really should specifially reply to that one. Sorry to hear about your Mother's illness and her passing.**

 _Knockout looked around the room, at well washed, shining walls of metal pained in lovely perfect chrome, and hints of pastel violet._ _He glanced up to a wonderful and high slopping ceiling, and the dangling simple little blue shaded lights that lit the room._ _There was no door that he was perfectly certain he'd slowly circled the entire room once before decided that it was indeed more definitely missing. Knockout had to admit to himself then that he had no idea in the least how he had actually gotten in there in the first place. He knew only that he had just sort of woken up wandering slowly around the pretty little room,_ _and that seemed not very long ago at all. He also knew that while there was clearly no door at all, he somehow didn't care about the absence of one._

 _"Hey…_ _er, Knockout, Ya just gonna wander around like_ _a confused bot without a processor, or ya gonna come sit down a second?"_

 _Knockout had no need to ask who had spoken. He knew the voice well. He knew too that he should not be hearing it, not anymore. But that too he considered and de_ _cided_ _in a second that he didn't care. It made no sense, and he didn't mind that it made none, because on some other level it all made perfect sense too._

 _"Breakdown!"_

 _His old friend sat in a seat at a table in the corner of the room, much like any that might have been seen in the common room on board the warship. He_ _sipped from an energon container and looked around the room a bit, with an almost grin barely formed on that as usual serious face of his._ _Without questioning it too much yet, Knockout occupied another of the chairs and joined him as he so often had for a simple fueling break._

 _So… where are we?" he asked. His logical mind began to shout that he was being all to casual and too accepting of the whole thing, but he tuned it out, strangely curious and determined instead to just watch everything unfold._

 _"Cybertron," Breakdown answered with a shrug of his huge heavy shoulders. "_ _Well Cybertron as it was before the war, back in the great days of our world, long before_ _it fell into ruin._ _This is the kind of place, you're helping rebuild. I dunno what this exact_ _building_ _is. Some kind of meeting hall or something. I just picked it because you'd prob'ly think it looked pretty cool in here."_

 _"_ _You realize of course, Breakdown, that that joke of yours was positively in bad taste don't you?" Knockout questioned, making his tone into one of seriousness. But all the while he was on the verge of laughing anyway. "A confused bot without a processor?_ _Really?"_

 _"Oh, so do know about your own state?"_

 _"Of course I know!" Knockout wondered in that second how he knew exactly and why even that didn't exactly bother him in the slightest. He only shrugged and leaned back in the chair, with his hands resting for a while with his hands behind his head and a grin on his face-plate._ _He knew his tone was likely a little more casual than he might ever have imagined it ever could be when he_ _said honestly, "so I must admit I'm slightly unsure._ _Have I,_ _or have I not completely off lined?"_

 _"Not just yet." Breakdown laughed a little,_ _making light of something that all of a sudden seemed like it would always been taken a little too seriously. "Believe me, if you had gone off line and fallen into the well of the allspark, you'd know it. Don't get me wrong. It isn't scary like some bots seem to fear it will be. Actually it's peaceful and quite beautiful. Even empowering in a way. I'm just saying when and if you do take that last fall, you'll know_ _it,_ _and its more than just this."_

 _Knockout slid even further back in his chair and turned to prop his feet up on the empty one closest to him._ _He caught a glimpse of his right arm, and for a moment he stared at his front fender_ _,_ _just admiring his paint-job. The thought crossed his mind that someday he might like to change his color scheme. Funny, he's always imagined he'd never want to give up his bright shade of red._ _But what color might just suit him? Green?_ _Oh no_ _no, absolutely not! Blue? Perhaps. A lighter shade of metallic blue._

 _"_ _Hmm_ _," he said, still almost too casually and he knew it. "I wonder what_ _I look like now, physically speaking."_

 _Breakdown shook his head as a look of something near dread covered his face-plate. "Yeah, you prob'ly don' t wanna know"_

 _"_ _I would_ _think_ _you're quite right actually, my friend._ _Ah frag it, I think I like this better._ _I can only imagine reality is only complete despair for now._ _Last I remember, things were getting pretty slagging scary._ _Say… breakdown…?"_

 _"_ _Yeah?"_

 _"_ _Am I going to_ _go off line_ _?"_ _He still wasn't scared and still thought that a bit odd and yet a relief as well. He was simply asking._

 _"_ _Er… I think that's left to you for now._ _You kind get to pick this one yourself._ _I can't lie. I never could. And they all thought the 'cons were nothing but dishonest, eh?_ _Coming back from this will be pretty bad._ _Circuits are all fried and trashed, and everything is trying to rework itself into new pathways. Yeah it's not good. But then you're a medic. You would have imagined that already and how could I stop you from doing it. You know it'll be painful and prob'ly completely terrifying._ _Scrap, just living will be scary as it always was."_ _The big blue bot took another sip from his container. "_ _That said, if you chose to go, I think you'd leave behind some genuinely saddened Atutobots."_

 _Knockout's optics lit up for a moment. "You know then that I'm an Autobot now?"_

 _Breakdown grinned a rare grin at him. "Sure._ _And for the record, I'm not against the idea."_

 _"_ _If someone, anyone at all really, had told me not so long ago, that one da_ _y I'd actually do such a thing and that I'd truly want to more than anything,_ _I would simply have hit the floor." Knockout gave a laugh and waved his hand in the air dramatically._

 _"Sorry_ _about_ _laughing once when you tried to say you might have done it one day."_

 _"Mah, I got over in it minutes. Thanks for not_ _turning me in on that one_ _._ _You always were my protector. Protecting me from Starscream, and his rage. You were big enough, no one would argue with_ _you_ _about leaving me alone."_

 _"_ _You know… it won't scare you forever. That past I mean. The violence, the guilt, the rage._ _Oh, it'll take a while I guess, yeah. But you've go_ _t_ _a good team now, and some decent friends if you'd let them be."_

 _"I…_ _I think I want to."_

 _"Wake up and go back?"_

 _"Yeah,"_ _Knockout leaned forward again in his chair. He took a quick intake of air though he knew in that state he didn't physically need to, and steadied himself as his anxiety began to rise up even away from his own body. "I think I'm ready for this."_

 _"_ _Err.. hey Knockout" Breakdown said slowly. "_ _In all our years serving together on the warship, and the years before that, you refused to think I was stupid. I kno_ _w most bots thought I was pretty dumb, but you refused to think so."_

 _"_ _What does that possibly have to do with anything now?" Knockout questioned. He forced a laugh and tried not to get scared at the thought of what might soon await him. He thought h_ _e_ _would much rather stay longer and chat with his old friend._

 _"You refused to believe I was dumb," Breakdown said, grinning now. "And at the same time I always refused to believe you were really just some slaggin' coward that only know how to run away."_

 _The grin left his face-plate again and he got to his feet. After a second or two he spoke again, his tone once again completely serious. "_ _I was told to tell you that you have no real idea just what exactly it is you think you are ready for. Your medical knowledge is vast and detailed and all, but it's all just textbook information until you've experienced it yourself in some way or other."_

 _Knockout shrugged with arrogant boldness, and knew his arrogance was all just for show now. "Oh I've been through worse. Just a couple of months ago in fact… ended up quite perfectly scrapped th_ _e_ _n, and_ _well I lived to tell..."_

 _Breakdown only shook his head and laughed a nervous little laugh through a serious look. "That was nothing. But the wonderful news in all this is that this time the horrible part might just be over so much quicker..."_

 _"_ _Oh Primas..." Another intake to steady himself yet again. His old friend was the furthest thing from joking abut any of this. "Surely you'll be with me… at least for a..."_

 _Breakdown shook his head. He didn't look sad. Didn't look happy. Did_ _n't_ _l_ _ook_ _like any feeling really at all. "You don't need me, and I have places to be. Life hardly ends when you take that fall, you know. You have others who you need now and you've got them._ _"_

 _Knockout glanced around the room again as it all faded away slowly._

"Remember to hold that ready. And step back a little more for a second." A voice was speaking somewhere, but Knockout could not place it or it's location. He was aware only of how loud it sounded, and just how much pain was instantly present in every point of his body. Sharp stabbing, burning pains shot through this systems, threatening to tear him to pieces from both the outside and in. Certain places ached and ached worse, and there were so many of such places that he couldn't tell which each was at all.

He was aware of fighting back the pain for a second or less he nearly succeeded. But it only came right back again, new bursts of agony through the same circuitry and a few new ones added to the mess, as connections fired and misfired, only to do the same again and again. He head hurt as though it had been crushed flat beneath an entire downed building. The connections between processor and body continued trying to fire and short and rework themselves and it never felt any better for a second. The firing of faulty connections created more of a constant burning ache, which spread quickly over his form until his whole form felt like it was burning with acid rain and filled with nothing but pain.

Knockout was only vaguely aware of moving, and he knew he was not doing on on purpose. It might have been simpler, easier to just stay still. But on another level his own body and processor made itself move, and somewhat violently so, in an effort to shake off and push away pain and the natural growing panic that went with it. A body and mind, he knew well, would always try even if in vain, to escape from such suffering, to move, to fight, to raise it's arms up in front in self defense.

"What should I do to help him?" This voice was different from the first, and over it, he was aware of his own horrible moans that bordered closely on erupting into full on screaming.

"Not much you can do, I'm afraid. As horrible as it is, his processor has just got to get itself re-calibrated, and find each connection through the frame." The first voice spoke again. Knockout forced himself to concentrate of what it was saying, while still fully aware of fighting against the pain that would not end and aware of still being unable to help that.

"I… I think he's disconnected one of the lines..." the second voice sounded like he was getting scared.

"He certainly did. I need that line for a second round of pain medication. That will hopefully do a fair bit of good. Frag it! This is hardly the best circumstance under which to be trying to reattach lines!"

"He… he's bleeding..."

"Damaged himself when he pulled that line free. It's not much. I'll fix it later."

Knockout knew that his optics were closed, and he knew he didn't want to open them if he even could. That would explain well the darkness, but didn't understand the painfully bright flashes of colors blinking and flashing sometimes fast and sometimes slower in front of him. He only knew the lights were tearing through his optic connections so badly he made him fight back more screams. He was barely conscious of raising his hands toward his face-plate, and in desperate and growing panic, he was just slightly aware of frantically trying to wave away lights that he knew he could not physically touch. A pair of hands firmly grabbed his arms. He felt both of them hold tightly and he could hear his own screams of terror at being held, echo through the air.

"Whoa, hold on. It's alright. You're fine, you're okay. We just need to help you hold still for a bit so you don't damage yourself." One of the voices was addressing him now, and he knew he knew that voice. He knew both in fact. He understood that they would never mean any harm, but all the same the pain was still tearing him apart and when he finally thought to speak without even an idea of the message he wished to convey he heard only noise. "Try to keep you intakes steady. Keeping venting air, nice and slow."

" _I always refused to believe you were really just some_ _slaggin'_ _coward_."

In the back of his processor, that line spoken by a now long dead old friend played and replayed again.

"His armor is too warm. He... he's overheating pretty bad." The voice of whoever was still holding into him still sounded nervous.

"He's alright," the first voice answered at once. "His processor still needs to work out how to kick on the cooling fans again. If it doesn't trigger in a few minutes we'll need to grab cooling packs for now, but let's give this a minute first."

"T _he wonderful news in all this is that this time the horrible part might just be over so much quicker..."_

This surely had to be what that meant. He heard his own moaning screams of terrified pain die out slightly, and then much more, and it was only then that he realized it didn't hurt nearly so much now.

"Think you can open your optics and look at me?" The first voice was speaking to him now. The old Autobot medic. Knockout slowly looked out of open optics at a room he recognized. Nearby, and still holding his arms down against his chest-plates as gently as he could, was the smaller black and yellow bot.

Knockout managed a weak little grin at both of them, but he was sure it looked nothing like a proper grin at all. Everything still hurt and quite badly. He was burning hot and freezing cold shivering all at once. The bright flashes had mostly stopped but once in a while, even with open optics he would still see one of any random color.

"Can you just look a tiny bit to the left?" Ratchet was questioning him patiently, but with his usual serious firmness as well. Knockout understood that without bothering to even try protesting that the old bot would not back down until he had at least attempted his assessments. Slowly and still fighting the great discomfort of reworking connections, he shifted his optics a little to the side of his field of vision.

"Ohhh…." the old Autobot chuckled a little out loud, and it was clear he was trying to lighten a mood of seriousness. "Other left."

Knockout looked in the other direction, convinced he'd been correct the first time, out all the while second guessing that. Bumblebee looked far too concerned, as he stood nearby, but Ratchet only shook his head a little as he went over more assessment checks and Knockout struggled a little to comply.

"He's likely still just a little sleepy, 'Bee. Bound to mix up a couple of directions."

The poor little black and yellow bot was generally good at jumping into the role of medical assistant. It even appeared that he was even genuinely interested in the work. But so clearly this was far too much for the still very young and inexperienced bot. As soon as he had let Knockout's arms go, he stepped back against the wall and stood for a moment still in his field of vision, wide eyed and clearly almost trembling.

"Hey Knockout," Ratchet placed a hand gently on one of his shoulder panels. "I can only imagine you must still feel pretty horrible. Your processor was nearly in completely shut down and that meant pretty well every connection within your framework had already shut down. As soon as I brought you out of a power down, every broken connection started find the rest of the network, which is good news, but it's also pretty horrific. You know that now of course."

Knockout just looked up at him, his vision clearing and the flashes nearly stopped, and listened, understanding his words as the old medic went on talking to him. "It'll hurt quite a bit for a while. And your head probably feels like someone very big and mean stomped right on you. I was able to repair the cause of the glitches and you haven't had any more since, which is very good news. I've rewired as much as I could. Your own systems will take care of things from here, and it looks like its already working for you. Hmm… can you try talking to me for a second? Yeah, I know you're pretty unhappy at the moment." The old medic gave another little mood lightening laugh again. "Ha! Go ahead and complain for a second about all this."

Knockout looked up at him for a second, suddenly more than willing to tell him just how right he was. His thoughts had been coherent all along and he knew that was good, without being told. But somehow the thought he was clearly forming in his processor just didn't seem to translate well into a vocal process. For a more then a couple of seconds he struggled with this and in another second he was first frustrated and then downright anxious. The pain had still not left him, and in fact it seemed to be growing worse again.

"Fragging scrap this!" he said, speaking, but mostly just mumbling as pain tore through his processor again and his head went to steady banging.

"That probably sums this up pretty well, now doesn't it," Ratchet answered back in understanding. He gently took Knockout's arm and turned it over to inspect part of the lower section of it's underside. "You're bleeding just a tiny bit here. One second, just let me..."

That simple of a thing didn't bother him in the least. He had in fact barely noticed it at all. But so much had happened to scare and confuse and overwhelm him. And it had all been so sudden and far beyond any real control. Knockout tried to stop the stream of washer fluid as it poured suddenly from both of his optics, but it was as far beyond his control, as so much else had been. Within second, his frame shook with with terrible sobs of pain and despair, and a state he could not even understand. The pain banging and tearing through his head was only worsened by his outburst of emotion, and with his optics still open, and blurred with the spilling fluid, the room appeared to spin around him faster and faster as the lights began to flash and blink again. The old medic just barely managed in time to quickly pull him into one side, before he violently purged his fuel tanks, probably in part from strain the terrible crying had put on his own weakened frame.

It was mostly out of completely exhaustion, and still shaking from uncontrollable emotional reaction, that Knockout eventually dropped into recharge.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Miko was outside the base, sitting with her knees neatly folded under her on a wooden bench. She held her sketch book on her lap and killed time working on a drawing that was far from her best work. A quick glance at her cellphone, before she pocketed the device again and went back to her art, told her it was just after six in the morning. Metal footsteps against the concrete walking path made her look back up again, and she set down the sketchbook and her pencils.

Arcee wondered up closer and when the human said nothing, she sat herself down on the ground beside the bench. In her hand, the bot held a human sized plastic water bottle from inside the kitchenette mini fridge. Miko could only giggle at that, because it really did look funny, the clear plastic bottle held between a thumb and finger of a much too big metal hand. The bot somehow did not manage to flatten the bottle, simply trying to carry such a thing around.

"Thanks, Arcee," Miko said when the bot handed her the bottle. She opened it and took a drink. "I guess I was thirsty,"

"You couldn't sleep either last night I see," Arcee commented.

Miko shook her head and drank more water.

"I don't think anyone slept or recharged well last night," Arcee said, she gave a little laugh. "Well except for Bulkhead. That's one bot that knows how to pass out cold and rest for ages, and through anything. Well anything except maybe a scraplet in the walls."

For a second Miko cringed at the mention of scraplets. She'd encountered the critters herself. It had not been good. Though they were pretty well harmless to a human, she still shuddered from time to time, just remembering what she'd seen a swarm could do to a bot's armor. A second later though she laughed at the remark.

"I'm pretty sure Bulk' would wake up screaming like a girl if he had scraplets in his room." Miko giggled again, and that quickly turned to full on loud laughter. "You shoulda' heard him shriek like a girl, when he stepped under those cables in the basement of the old base. If there's one thing Bulk's afraid of..."

"It's gotta be scraplets." Arcee finished, laughing pretty hard too. "Oh, I've seen him scream like nothing on Cybertron, whenever even one turned up."

Miko drank more of the cold water as they both let their laughter die away. A good laugh did them both a little good.

"Hey Miko," Arcee said after a moment.

"Hmm?" the little human finished the last of the water in the bottle and looked at the bot again.

"I just wanted to tell you impressed I've been with you these last few days. Yeah I know you're Bulkhead's partner, but you know how he's just not good with words. This whole visit has been nothing but the unexpected, and you've handled it all the best of all on the human front I think."

"Thanks, I guess. But I'm just doing what I always did."

"Well I for one think it's pretty cool to see. I think the others would all agree, that you've grown up so much, even in the short time since we left for home. You know, Ratchet's been quite impressed apparently too. He hasn't had time to say too much, because of course he's had a very sick bot on his hands. But he says you've been a lot of help with all this."

"Really?"

"Yeah, he really said that," Arcee laughed again. "He actually told me to tell you that too, instead of that usual old pretend to be grumpy, and dislike the presence of the human routine of his. Hey, it looks like Raf is cooking breakfast if you want some. He couldn't sleep either. I've gotta say I was a bit worried at first, imagining he'd set himself on fire. But before I came out here, it looked like he was doing okay."

"Raf has something like six or eight brothers and sisters. His house is in constant chaos. It's either cook for yourself by the age of like seven or you're done for. I think he's got this, Arcee."

"Well if you want some, it looks like he's making a lot."

"I'll grab some in a bit." Miko turned herself on the bench so that she was leaning her elbows on the armrest, and with her chin in her hands, she looked up at the bot still sitting on the ground. "Hey, has Ratchet said anything yet about Knockout? He must be alive, because I think he'd tell us quickly if the worst happened, right? How is he?"

Acree smiled a little. "I checked in on them not long ago, yes. That's when Ratchet told me he was impressed with you. Bumblebee's been helping him in the medbay. Anyway, it looks like the repairs were nearly complete and soon Ratchet is going to try bringing Knockout back out of power down for a while, see how he does."

Miko grinned over her sense of relief at the news. For a moment she thought back to her time the year before, sitting with a badly damaged Bulkhead, and the worry that he too might nearly have died. She wondered, in her still young innocence, if it ever did get easier to see a friend in such a bad state, and to know how to be of any help to anyone.

"I've often thought 'Bee would make a good medic," she said, changing the subject a bit, because her own thoughts were starting to make her somehow a bit sad, and Miko always had liked the positive so much better.

Acree nodded, with another little grin on her face. "I've so often thought that. I've even told 'Bee that. So has Ratchet actually. The kid's sure got the compassion and intelligence for it. But there was always a war going on, and he's never even put much thought into doing much else but fighting on the front lines. You never know, Miko. Maybe someday..."

Arcee went quiet and tipped her head very slightly to one side. Clearly she was listening to her comm unit. She never did say anything in reply to whomever had been speaking to her, but in a minute she stood up from the ground.

"Ratchet just called me. He'd like both of us back to the medbay right away." When Miko looked horrified for a second, the bot paused and looked down at her, as the human stood up herself. "Oh no, it actually sounds like it was good news, not bad at all."

The bot and the little human were both cautious and quiet when the entered the medbay after waling quickly through the base. For a second they both just stood in the doorway, Miko peeking out around Arcee's knees still so uncertain of what to say when obviously she had been specifically called on. Ratchet stepped toward them both at once, and tried to look down at Miko once in a while as he spoke, so that he could properly include a tiny human being in the conversation.

"I've done everything I possibly can." The old medic bot looked so tired, and yet he also had about him a look of cautious confidence, that he hadn't shown earlier. "I let Knockout wake from power down a while ago. His condition is not exactly good. But it's better than I may have expected. Waking a bot from a state like his is never easy on anyone, and in this case, yes it was pretty bad. He was pretty well inconsolable for a while sadly. I let him fall into rechange on his own and I would imagine he'll rest a while now.

"You need to recharge yourself," Arcee said, in a serious tone. She looked toward Bumblebee, who was standing nearby. "Both of you. Miko and I can sit with Knockout a while."

Bumblebee was quicker to agree, but Ratchet stood around for several minuets, so obviously ready to protest. He opened his mouth and closed it again, saying nothing. He had no excuse and he clearly knew it. Arcee gently took him by the arm and led him toward the door, with a shake of her head at his usual and persistent stubbornness.

"A quick little nap and I'll be back to check again," he said, obviously reluctant to leave a patient, but just as obviously almost unable to stay on his feet. "Comm me if I'm gone for a couple hours at most. By then I'll need to wake him to make new assessments."

Miko climbed back to the top of Ratchet's work table in the far corner of the room again. She sat down comfortably on top of the flat surface, and swung her legs over the edge as she had done before. Arcee stood near her, leaning lightly against the edge of the work table.

"May not seem like it to you yet," the bot said, keeping her voice low, "but he is looking a little better than he did last night."

Miko looked to see what Arcee had meant. Knockout had been disconnected from some of the monitor wires, and now slept soundly in recharge laying on one side facing toward them. Clearly he'd fallen into recharge like that and had simply been left to sleep that way. Dried up streaks of the cleaner fluid she knew could spill from a bot's optics as a human might cry tears, still staining his face-plate. But Arcee was right when she'd said he looked at least a bit better.

"Remember when Bulkhead was hurt not so long ago?" Arcee asked, still quiet. Miko nodded silently.

"Of course," she said, keeping her own voice low as well. "That was a terrible couple of weeks. And the day I walked through the ground bridge to find him on the floor, with Ratchet yelling something about critical injuries; that was the day I really understood that you guys can die too. Just like us humans can. I knew it was possible I guess, but I never gave it much thought. That was the day I saw your guys had your breaking point too, just like us. I still worry sometimes about Bulk' getting hurt like that again. I worry about all of you really."

"Miko, it was never your job to worry about us…."

"I know that! But I do sometimes anyway. It's just what I do. Raf and Jack do too."

"My point though was that you were so much help to Bulkhead back then." Arcee said, giving the human a gentle pat on the back with one of her metal hands. "I will admit there was a time I would have thought it was far from possible, but Miko I think one of your gifts to the team is a talent for working with sick bots. I would bet that gift would transfer so well to humans too."

"Me? In a job helping sick people? I've always thought I'd do something with music."

"Maybe you can do both somehow."

"Hmm… maybe..." the little human was intrigued. She considered things she never had before.

Miko pulled her legs up onto the work table and rested her elbows on her knees. Any conversation died and she just stayed for a while, looking around the room with carious interest at monitors, some in use and others simply stored against the back wall, and other strange pieces of Cybertronian medical equipment.

"Hey, Arcee….?" she said after a while.

"Hmm?"

"Tomorrow morning I ground bridge back home to Tokyo. Yeah, it sounds strange to me too, to think tomorrow afternoon I'll be back in my old normal life. Raf is leaving too and Jack is starting a new job. Wasn't the plan for you guys also to bridge back to Cybertron tomorrow afternoon sometime?"

The bot nodded, and Miko went on. "I guess that's not gonna work now."

Arcee stayed leaning as she was against the work table. She shook her head with a sigh, and for a second let her face-plate show just how overwhelmed she was with planning for the unforeseen. "In truth, we're not sure what to do yet. Knockout is still far too sick to be moved, even if Ratchet came back with us again. Of course we've got that new ship bound for Cybertron, and it should be there in a couple of Earth days. Bulkhead needs to get construction moving again and now he'll have more help, but that will also mean training them.

"Honestly we could only come up with the idea of splitting up the team for a short time. Smokescreen, the wreckers will go home, leaving Knockout here with Ratchet. 'Bee would stay behind as well, to be a little extra help. Bumblebee would bring Knockout back home soon enough. As for me, I'm not sure yet which team needs me more. It's hardly ideal, but its the best we've got. Someone needs to meet that ship, and there's still so much to do."

It was a short time later, than Miko glanced up toward Knockout, to see his optics partly open, and gazing sleepily around the room a bit. She gently tapped Arcee's arm, and the bot looked over at once. Miko was concerned to see Knockout wake on his own before Ratchet could have known to come back, and one look at Arcee told her the bot shared her concerns.

"Miko, I've got to comm Ratchet. Why don't you go and make sure Knockout is alright."

"Me?" the human started to protest, uncertain as ever. But she somehow found her confidence and quickly climbed down from the work table, so that she could run across the room and climb up near the still very sick bot.

"Arcee's on the comm with Ratchet. She'll let him know you're awake so he can come back and check on you," she said. She gently sat herself down beside him and looked him in the still half closed optics. She watched, with a sinking feeling that she tried hard to keep from showing on her face, as she understood the look of pain in his still sleepy expression. She reminded herself that Knockout could probably only get better again from there, instead of worse, but if it was at all possible, she was sure he showed far more discomfort now, in his recovering state, than he had while his systems were in the process of shutting down.

"Can you talk?" she asked, as she forced back panic and wondered what exactly it was that was scaring her. She remembered that she had known what to do before with more than one sick or injured bot and she knew she could only do what seemed right again. "Do you want to talk with me for a bit? Or you could just listen and I'll talk to you, okay? Tomorrow I'm going home to Japan. I'll miss you just about as much as I'll miss Bulkhead again. Wow ya just gotta love terrible timing huh? You'll be going back to Cybertron too, soon enough. I told Bulk to come visit me one day in Tokyo. You should visit too. Ha, just remember to drive on the other side of the road. It's pretty darn crowed over there, but there's gotta be some place you could still go fast, right."

"Never... seen Japan... Someday… I should... like to," Knockout said. His voice was so quiet, and shaky, probably from the obvious pain. He spoke very slowly, and it was clear that words took a moment to consider and put together into sentences. But he could speak, and far better than she might have expected. Arcee stood near the door, busy on the comm unit. But Miko clearly saw her faceplate turn up in a smile of surprise and then relief at hearing him speaking too.

"The other bots have learned to send messages to us little humans' phones using their comms. I'll add your comm, and then when you get better you can talk to me too," Miko said. Knockout said nothing back, and he looked so tired and still unhappy with pain and discomfort. But his optics showed his happy agreement with her suggestion.

Ratchet hurried into the medbay, and for a brief second he stopped it he doorway. Miko saw him out of the edge of her field of vision, as he exchanged an approving look with Arcee before he walked closer. He held out a hand for Miko, and she quickly hopped onto it. She gave a laugh of surprise as the old bot reached up to plop her down gently on his left shoulder panel.

"That'll work for a bit," he said, obviously speaking to both of the other bots in the room. He shook his head a bit, and in a tone so obviously meant to only pretend to be cranky about it he added, "The trouble with humans is they are so tiny. At least if they're sitting on you, you know you won't step on one."

"Looks like you're feeling at least a little bit better," he addressed his patient.

"A bit," Knockout nodded his head slightly.

"You fell into recharge laying like that. I left you to rest that way. Do you want to move now?"

"I… no no, this feels… better..."

Ratchet held out a hand instructing slowly, "Touch your left hand to my fingertips for a second."

Knockout gave a barely audible groan of complaint at first. It was sadly clear the last thing he wanted to do was to move even a little bit. After a moment he reached out to comply. He touched the tips of his fingers to the old medic's just fine, but it as with the wrong hand.

 **Note/ Letting Knockout die, after trying so hard, would have been just unfair. I did think about it for a few** **seconds** **, but noooooooooo. I wasn't gonna kill him off.**


	14. Chapter 14

**Note/ Another short 'mini chapter' again. Only slightly related tot he overall plot and one that could almost have been a stand alone piece at first, and that I instead decided to tie into this larger story. This one ended up centered almost entirely around Ratchet and Bumblebee. They are interesting characters and I like writing for both of them so along came this...**

 **I better put in a tiny little warning, just to be safe. There is slight medical related graphic description in here.**

"It's so quiet here with so few of us around," Bumblebee commented between sips from his energon container. He glanced around the common room of the small Earth base.

Ratchet made a slight huffing noise as he sat down with a container of his own. "No more kids racing around. Makes all the difference I'd say." The old bot huffed again, looking up to the human area behind the upper railing – now free of children, inflatable mattresses and the noisy game system. He signed in relief, but the sigh was so clearly over the top with exaggeration.

"Ah come on Ratchet," 'Bee answered, with a grin. He propped both of his feet up on an unused work surface in reach of the bench they sat on. "We all know full well, you love those kids as much as any of us do. As much as you want to pretend they were always just in the way."

"Tell no one," The old medic said, with a look on his face-plate strangely somewhere between a scowl and a smirking grin.

Bumblebee laughed once, and finished his container. With a sneaky look about him, and almost inching over some toward the farthest end of the bench he remarked, "Ha, and who would I tell? The Cybertronian coalition for cranky old Autobots?"

"Watch it," Ratchet warned, with an almost grin, that he tried as obviously as ever to hide behind a serious expression. He pointed a finger toward the younger bot. "I'm not so old I can't still knock your doors clean off, kid. And git your feet off of there!"

'Bee moved his feet back to the floor in compliance at once, but still he laughed under his intakes.

"It's not just that the kids are gone home though," the young Autobot said, thinking, noticing. "It's that half our team is gone too. The place suddenly feels so big, quiet, empty…"

"'Bee, splitting up the team was a choice made out of necessity..."

"Oh, I know. I never thought it was the worst idea. It's just weird still being here. You enjoy being stationed here, with no other bots around for months?"

Ratchet considered for a moment, and then finally gave a small nod. "I do mostly, yes. Funny, I wanted to go back home so badly. Probably more than any of us did. But working here, by myself, I think I like the quiet. The American forces gave me a new contract down here. Two years and then from there I decide what I'll do. Anyway there's always a lot of work to be done. Endless research mostly. And then there's the comm to be manned. We never know when a refugee group's communication signal might be routed through our comms here instead of home base on Cybertron. The space bridge needs to stay maintained, and I'm not about to let a bunch of human engineers go poking around in Cybertronian technology, and either blow themselves up, or break our still much needed bridge, in their efforts to help us with its maintenance.

Bumblebee got up to carry his empty container away to a specialized sanitation machine across the room, so that it could be washed with others and recycled back into use. He took Ratchet's too and then spent a couple of minutes loading and starting the machine. He went back again to take a seat on the bench.

"Ratchet, can I talk to you for a minute?" he asked. He was serious now and looking the old bot in the optics.

When the medic nodded silently, Bumblebee spoke honestly. "I know you asked that I be kept back when the team split up, because you wanted me in the capacity of medical assistant down here..."

"Indeed I did."

"Yeah, I guess everyone is saying now that I'd make a good medic some day. I always liked learning, helping out. Honestly, I've really thought about it, at least a few times."

"Bumblebee, everything is changing and fast now. Our world is alive again. You have a whole future ahead of you. You were always good within the warrior class, but if I might be honest I've so often felt like it would be a waste of your potential, for you to never do anything else. If the conflict starts back up again, Primas forbid, the Autobot forces will be in constant need of good field medics. And if the war is really over this time, we will always need good bots running the clinics. I've steered some decent, smart, determined bots away from this work more times than I can count. It's not too often I find one I'd love to see go in that direction instead."

"Wow. Ratchet, I didn't know you felt that strongly about it..." 'Bee looked at the floor, suddenly unsure what to say next.

"Listen," Ratchet said, seriously. The younger bot looked him in the optics again. "No one can tell you what do with your life. No one ever should. But we can all advise and encourage and help a young bot find a worthy path that will make him happy. It sounds like you really were thinking it over, and now I think I sense a 'but, coming any second."

When the old medic chuckled a little 'Bee nodded, almost embarrassed. "I don't think I'd be any good in the field. Yesterday, you had me help you when you woke Knockout up. Honestly that was horrible. He was just screaming so much, and fighting and freaking right out, and I didn't know what to do. I wanted to run for it, instead of waiting until there was something I could do."

Ratchet nodded again, with an understanding that surprised the younger bot. "Yeah, I probably should not have put you into a situation like that. But I needed help and you were the most obvious choice. I… I've been doing this work for so long, and I've seen so much, I almost forget that most bots don't on a daily basis. At the very least I should have told you it would likely be pretty horrific. Honestly though 'Bee, if you were seriously considering this field of work, don't let that be the thing that makes you think you would never be any good. It's the fact that such things do bother you that makes me think you could do it, actually."

"Really?"

"Sure," Ratchet gave a little laugh and shook his head, with a look of dismay. "I had an instructor, back in my training days, I interned under him for awhile. Very good at what he did, and he even made a decent teacher too. But I realized quite early on, just how much he seemed to favor knocking bots into power down. Now granted, there are plenty of cases where powering down is the best choice, or even the only way to even think about working. But this old fellow – he could barely weld a simple seam on a bot while they were conscious and talking! So finally one day I asked him why. I knew it it was more than possible to avoid such measures and work on a conscious bot. I'd seen others do it just fine. Ha, most of the injured patients I'd seen worked on, would simply chat about their last vacation, assuming they were calm enough, and they trusted you? There will always be many that scream, or cry, or even pull a weapon out of fear or confusion as to where they are and who we are. The screaming is pretty gut wrenching... the weapons are terrifying! But it gets easier. It all becomes just another days work, and if I'm honest I cant decide if that's a good thing or not. "

"So why did he say he did it that way? The instructor and the powering down?" Bumblebee questioned, interested.

Ratchet shook his head, harder this time. Clearly after so many years the matter still aggravated him. "Well he explained that when a bot is unconscious, you are basically working with a pile of metal and parts. It's easy to work on metal and parts, when you know how to do it well. But when they are awake, talking to you, questioning, and in a worst case, possibly screaming. When you can see their optics looking back at you, counting on you to keep them alive… well apparently that's when it gets to be too much to deal with."

'Bee's mouth dropped open and for a second or two he just stared, blinking in disbelief. "That sounds like a terrible medic. That's just so… cold."

"Oh, it is! I've long held the belief that anyone entering the field with a mindset like that, is likely far better suited to working on simple machines. I learned a great deal from that instructor. Most of the Cybertronian anatomy lessons were the ones I remembered the best when I started out on my own. But it was also from him that I learned exactly the type of medic I never wanted to be."

"I doubt you ever were." As soon as Bumblebee had said that he fell silent entirely and stared down at his own knees. He felt suddenly uneasy, and he considered a slight change of topic, to back himself out of the track his mind had gone down without him wishing it too. But instead, still looking down with his intakes increasing slightly he said, "I remember the first time I met you. Back in the field hospital on Cybertron."

"You do?"

'Bee nodded slightly and still his optics stayed low. Almost unconsciously he pulled his arms in a little, in a gesture of self protection, and preservation. He spoke again, but was it was quieter now. "Well I do, a tiny bit. I remember waking up at some point in some dim lit room. There was this light overhead, but it just kept flickering on and off. Someone somewhere else was yelling something about rerouting the power before it all went dark. Someone else was cursing out the 'cons, yelling about how troopers had blown one of the generators. I must have brushed a hand against my face, at some point because when the lights flashed on brighter and I looked at my hand and saw that it was covered in energon. My hand did hurt, but it wasn't bad, and I knew all that wasn't coming from there. I realized I could feel it running all over my face, and I panicked a bit as I realized my lower face-plate was just gone… I know for a second I had this sick understanding that my hand was sore because I had cut my fingers on the jagged edge of whatever was left of my own face-plate. I decided in that second for whatever reason I was absolutely not going to cry my optics out."

"'Bee," Ratchet looked almost horrified at the story he was hearing recounted. "We don't need to talk about..."

Bumblebee shook his head slightly. "No, It's alright. I'm fine with it." It was surprising even to him, but he actually was. He looked up then and met the medic's optics, as the older bot put a hand on his shoulder panel in assurance.

"I remember at some point you had your arms almost over top of me, as if you wanted to protect me from something. Your armor was dirty, scratched, dented. And your optics looked so strange. A mix of rage, compassion, exhaustion, and just a look of 'will there be no end.' And you were yelling toward the door across the room, 'frag you! I won't just leave this kid to die. I would never...' Then you put your hand against mine and said 'I want to power you down now. Squeeze my hand if you're ready, kid.' I remember I tried to, but I don't know when I let go again."

"Are you alright, 'Bee?" Ratchet never broke optic contact with the younger bot.

"Yeah. But thanks. I've always remembered that tiny bit of it. I know there has to have been a lot more, but I don't remember any of that."

"I… I had no idea you remembered anything honestly."

"I guess I just never told you I did."

"I think you're still blocking most of it out," Ratchet said. His optics looked thoughtful. "That's not exactly a bad thing. Well not always. It depends on the case. But in yours I've never been terribly concerned. You might never remember anything more about any of that, and honestly that's probably good. The first day I saw you again after so many years and so many quite forgotten patents though the field hospitals, I knew who you were in seconds. The first I clearly remembered that day was how as soon as I'd given you my hand and you went quickly into power down, it was a bit of a job to make you let go again."

"I always felt so bad seeing how much you blamed yourself," 'Bee said after a moment. Ratchet looked slightly confused first and then a second later, surprised and then dismayed as he realized what his young teammate was talking about. But the younger bot went on, anyway. "I've heard others saying at least a couple of times how the two of us ending up together stationed in the same base here, just reminded you of your own failure in the field. Ratchet, you didn't fail me. I was just some kid you didn't even know once. I probably didn't even have a name to you then, and still you did the best you could. Do you have any idea how sad I was some nights to think I was stationed with a great old medic bot who inspired me to get interested in his work myself, and yet still blames himself for not doing enough?"

The old medic looked somewhere between tears and a smile as he looked down slightly at the young Autobot. After a speechless minute he said slowly, "I suppose it did all work out just fine eventually. I still have no idea what happened that day you were knocked into the pool of cybermatter. I would have thought once that should have killed a bot. But then there's never been a known case of such a thing ever happening before, so I would have only assumed... I have no idea even what the matter did to you, other than that it was clearly a positive thing."

"I gotta admit I was more than a bit surprised that you never once tried to so much as scan me. I had expected your scientific and medical curiosity would have made you do at least that." Bumblebee laughed, but all the same he knew he did have a fair point.

The old medic looked him in the optics again. "Oh, I've wanted to of course. How could I not. I'm a bot of science after all. As you can well imagine, it was only a day or two before my processor was spinning with the possibilities for research in anything related, that could one day hold any benefit to medical science. You better believe, I wanted to grab my scanner and then haul out far more equipment just as soon as we had the time to work on this."

"But you didn't..."

"No, I didn't," Ratchet shook his head, this time with some urgency behind the motion. "You're alive. You're perfectly fine. So we don't exactly have a problem then. Ne some level I suppose I figure maybe since you are now exactly what you should have been in the first place, you can somewhat forget you were ever so damaged. How fair would it have been of me to give you that reminder instead of hoping you'd just forget about it and live?"

"I wouldn't be against it, you know. I'd be more than willing to let you run a few scans."

"Any of it would be simple, completely noninvasive of course."

'Bee nodded in willing agreement. "Hey no problem." He was silent for a long moment, considering his next words more carefully. "I was never always just about to break, you know. As much as you always made sure, along with the rest of the team, that I was just like any other bot, because of course I am, I think you more than any of them always worried I was at that greater risk of losing it or something."

"I've been around a long time. I've seen bots fall completely off the deep end, thanks mostly to the war. And their issues were so often caused by much less. To be scraped so bad, when you were almost still a kid… you've never read your file."

"You've never let me. Bulkhead said once you hid the report away somewhere."

Ratchet nodded slowly. "I did. It seemed like the right thing once. Hmm…. I'm not sure it seems so anymore. If you want I will retrieve that report for you to read at some point before you go back to Cybertron."

Bumblebee nodded silently. After a minute though he spoke again. "I always realized you know, that everything you did, like hide that report, you did to protect me. That always meant everything. Maybe if I could have gotten away from my own self inflicted mindset of needing to be an unsentimental fighter class bot, I might have told you that years ago."

"I'm glad to hear that…." Ratchet's reply was cut short, as the human sized door – off in a corner of the base, a ways from the huge hanger doors – was yanked open.

Agent Fowler stepped inside with a stack of files and loose papers in his arms. He balanced a take out coffee cup and a small brown paper bag on the top of the little pile. Without putting down his little load, he nodded to the bots.

"Ratchet, Bumblebee. Good morning."

"Agent Fowler," Ratchet nodded once back, but said nothing more.

"Hey, uh, is Arcee around here? It was a little unclear if she was going back or staying here. I promised her I would drop off a bunch of photos that Jack left with me on a flash drive. I guess it's all pictures Miko took this past week. Arcee was going to add them to a data pad or something."

"I'll take the flash drive for her Agent Fowler," Bumblebee said. "She stayed here. Knockout made it clear he wanted her to stay with this team, and it didn't look like she wanted to leave either…" He gave a momentarily baffled look when the human agent put the tiny device into the palm of his hand. For a second the bot was genuinely unsure of how to carry something that small without breaking it. Finally he settled for gently holding it between a thumb and one finger, and making certain he didn't press on it hard."

"Hmm… so how is your sick teammate doing?" Fowler may have had his somewhat mixed opinions about the issue of the 'con defector among the Autobots. But he had showed genuine concern since he'd first been informed of a medical situation that had lead to use of a contingency plan.

Ratchet considered his answer for a second and then said, his tone serious as usual, "He's stayed stable for the last day at least. But his condition is still not exactly as good as I would like. He's still so sick, it's impossible to make a full assessment of his functions and motor skills, comprehension, and so on. In all honesty, Agent Fowler we don't know how bad this is, until he gets a little better."

"My higher ups over at HQ..." Fowler struggled a little with the files, so that he could keep them balanced with one hand and take a sip of his morning coffee with the other. He nearly dropped the whole stack. "I sent word to them that I had agreed to keep part of your team here for a while longer, due to a medical emergency. You should have heard some of the confused phone calls I got at home most of yesterday afternoon. Military types, mostly of high authority and mostly decent educations, all completely and utterly baffled as to how in the Sam Hill a bot can possible have a medical emergency! I tried to explain that you aren't machines, that you most certainly can and do get sick and that this time it sounded very serious. Last night I had a Major call to ask if perhaps he ought to send over a very good heavy duty mechanic. He actually thought that might do a hint of good!"

Fowler frowned, and both bots immediately did the very same.

"Thank you for the photos, Agent Fowler," Ratchet said after a moment. "I think Knockout will enjoy looking at them as well once Arcee gets them into the data pad."

Fowler dismissed himself and made his way up the staircase toward his office on the second floor. He turned around though midway up, and again, he nearly dropped his stack of files. "Oh, while I think of it, someone will be popping of tonight to repair that stair rail."

Ratchet nodded absently and when Fowler's office door closed, the old bot muttered under his intakes, "Just a bunch of machines… send over a mechanic for a sick bot… ooooh if I were younger and stupider I'd give those humans at HQ a good earful myself."

 **Note/ Yeah I know several finfic writers these days are tending towards tying their TFP stories into the RID** **story line** **, and of course had I done the same, the set up would have been to have 'Bee consider police work, ect,** **instead of considering the medical field. I'm just obviously not aiming to tie this into RID.**


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes/** **More warnings in here again. Another sad kind of chapter. Well at least this time it's only sad in parts.** **Plus possible trigger warnings for talk of death and borderline suicidal thoughts. Yeah… this is getting to be pretty dark in places now indeed. But I still like it and it's still looking like you do to, so off we go then. Just had to throw out that warning.**

Peace and order through tyranny. In Starscream's mind the concept had always made complete and utter sense. He'd been taught young, when he first chosen his side to which to pledge his allegiance, that fear and oppression were the very things that held together any decent society. Sentient beings could barely function in any kind of orderly and productive fashion without motivation to do so. And an ever present fear from the ranks above ones own, would always be the greatest of motivators to anyone.

Starscream had been seemingly hand picked at a point early in his enlistment, to learn the art of leadership and constructive dictatorship, at the hands of his own great leader. It had never been any thing close to a secret that he and the former leader of the Decepticon forces, had had more than their share of differences. Far from hidden rumors had spread among the lower ranks for years, relating to a belief that Starscream assumed Megatron was a mindless idiot. That had in fact never quite been true exactly. He felt he had only been a half mindless and careless fool. Never a true idiot. He would have easily told anyone that had dared to confront him, that there was indeed a difference. But now, months into his own leadership of the fleet, Starscream could no longer deny that he had a problem, and one that simply being smarter than his infamous successor could not solve.

Oh, the simple concept of ruling through fear certainly did work well enough. He had seen work again time and again. He had been a commander of troops himself, and he had long seen himself as a master of the technique in his own right. But, as he was learning more on a near daily basis lately, in the position of lord and master of the Decepticons, the troops just didn't quite fear him nearly enough.

He had extinguished the sparks of low ranked and expendable troopers without warning, and for infractions that seemed each day to be less and less important, or worthy of such punishment. When that had grown both almost ineffective and quite frankly, simply tedious and boring, he had experimented instead with letting the offenders live. From that he had learned that he could beat them, could starve them in the brig, could embarrass and humiliate them, or assign the worst of the dirty and menial tasks, and still it hardly seemed to make a difference.

There had always been dissension among the ranks. As well as near constant infighting among at least four fifths of the troops. That was hardly anything new. He knew full well I fact that he had long been far from above such trouble himself. But things had reached a whole new level, and this time it was him left to feel the frustration of dealing with it and he didn't like it. Starscream would never admit aloud to thinking so, but leadership, as he was learning, was harder than he'd thought.

A loud thumping against the door of his office, startled him from this thoughts. And with his feet still propped up on the top of his work table in front of him, he nearly flipped backward over his chair. His right foot, quickly shifted to catch the edging around the tabletop so that he could somewhat clumsily avoid the horrible spill. In his startled haste to catch himself, his arms flew to the sides and backward, seeking balance and without thinking about his actions, he nearly fired one of his integrated blasters at the wall. There was another, now even louder couple of thumps against the door. He got to his feet, grumbling and stomped across the room, to yank the door open.

A single vehicon trooper stood in the wide corridor, waiting right in front of the door, which he had obviously just banged on. Starscream looked from the trooper, to the little buzzer very close to where he stood. He wasn't sure he even wanted to know who it was that might have taught a trooper to bang on a door like that. Instead he only gestures with a shift of his optics an a slight shake of his head toward the buzzer and hoped he would get the hint.

"What do you want?" he snapped," silently impressed that the trooper had at least located the correct door. Many of them were not unknown for waiting for acknowledgment at the door of a storeroom by mistake.

"I have information for you," the trooper explained, speaking quickly, and showing the good mind to get right to the point. "From Soundwave."

The trooper held out a data pad that the communications officer obviously must have transferred said information into. Starscream snatched the pad at once.

"Come in here," he demanded, stepping back into his office with the trooper following him. While the vehicon stood by the closed door, awaiting the next order, Starscream hurriedly activated and then began to read from the pad. His optics moved across the notes with waning interest as he skimmed over a few notes of things he considered to be of little importance in the moment. After a moment though his optics lit up and opened wide with an undeniable opportunity. He clapped his hands together in front of him, and resisted the urge to leap out of his chair again with excitement.

"So," he said, addressing the waiting trooper simply because there was no one else around to address at the moment. "If this status report retrieved from an Autobot server, is to be trusted, it looks like our runaway medic might have had a little medical emergency of his own. This could perhaps somehow be useful..."

In all truth, Starscream was not, and never had been, all that concerned about a single defector. It was a known fact that he had left the Decepticons himself, even if he had returned again. And Knockout was hardly one to pose any great threat to him or his troops, whatever the case. A medic was not generally a great danger to find oneself on the wrong side of at the best of times. Knockout, for all of his perceived absurdity, was actually highly intelligent. But then so were most of the Autobots, and that had never scared him yet. Starscream may well have simply let his former medic walk away – it would certainly prove better on resources and time than chasing him across the galaxy – if only he was not convinced that Knockout's eventual execution would finally instill some real fear in his troops.

"If I let one get away now, there is little doubt others will up and walk away," he said, again addressing the trooper who mumbled his agreement, probably only out of obedience above anything else. I have so many on the verge of giving up the cause, and of disbanding all over Cybertron. I need to show them that loyalty is the one way to survive."

"Hmm… You!" He pointed a finger at the waiting trooper, and continued. "Get to the main comm, and put out a ship wide alert at once. All flying troops are to report to the flight deck at once."

The trooper mumbled his obedience and walked out. Starscream stood up from his desk, shoved the data pad into a drawer and stomped out to meet his troops. The tips of his wings flicked in anticipation. He was already planning an attack on enemies as he walked the hallway.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"Now, I know full well, you can do much better than that!" Ratchet said in a tine somewhere between demanding, and the closest he even tended to come to encouraging patience. "Try it again. Both hands flat against mine and push back toward me."

Knockout only glared at him for a long moment. His red optics, if they could have done so, would surely have burned holes through the old medic's armor. But Ratchet was not going to give up. He glared right back, with both of his hands held out in front of him.

It was another minute at least, before Knockout finally raised his right arm, so that he could place his hand against the medic's. The left was much slower to ever try to follow. He could just barely lift it under his own power at all, and to get it high enough for his hand to touch the waiting hand of the old medic was still well past impossible to do. As it was, he pressed against the medic's right hand with his own right hand, and managed in the meantime to hold the left, only just slightly up from the position it had been resting in.

It had been seven Earth days since Knockout had been woken up from power down, after his processor had nearly failed entirely. The first day an a half at least, his condition had remained so perilous, that any real level of any true function was not known. By the end of the second though it had become tragically clear that both of his left limbs, or their function at least, had been left profoundly damaged. The right ones thankfully were far better off. Left weakened, but that would fix itself with enough time and effort.

He'd been placed early in the morning on the second day into a somewhat more elaborate, (and unfortunately also far less comfortable,) version of a recharge station that any bot might use in their living space to rest on. And it had only been in the last couple of days that he'd even been able to finally to safely leave somewhat sitting up with the top section partly upright so that he could rest against it. At present, Arcee was siting in a chair, which she turned and positioned so that she could sit beside him while he practiced motions with the old medic.

Retraining the processor to use and move the two damaged left limbs was possible, and probably to a decent extent, eventually. But it would take daily work at it, and Knockout had began, over the past days, to spiral into a state of increasing helplessness. He was nearly constantly frustrated and felt like he should not be. His own frustration only made him feel worse, but all the same he could hardly help it. The nearly four times daily, long moments of glaring so furiously had become normal.

"Don't you make me go fetch my trusty old bot beatin' wrench," Ratchet warned with a shake of his head, after Knockout had refused a third try at the same motion again. He glanced toward a drawer of his work table where most bots knew full well said large heavy wrench was kept. Knockout sat glaring at him, and a look in his optics said clearly without any words 'you wouldn't.

"Oh you better believe I would," Ratchet huffed. Replying to the obvious unspoken challenge. Everyone knew full well Ratchet would never hit them with a wrench, or any other object for that matter. But somehow just the simple threat of it tended to make patients want to obey him anyway. "I think you're more than well enough by now, it wouldn't exactly be entirely unethical of me to give you a good whack over that stubborn hard head of yours."

Slowly, and still nearly burning holes though armor panels with narrowing optics, Knockout forced himself to try it again.

"Good job. Let your arms drop for a second. Reach back up and we'll do that again." Knockout managed the motion this time slightly faster, and with a bit more strength, and he was rewarded with a slight nod of approval from the older bot medic.

"Hmm…." Ratchet said at once. "Let's bring your hands together, right up in front of you."

Knockout managed to bring his right arm up in front of him, and could hold it above his own body. He turned his wrist perfectly well at the same time. But on top of so much other damage to the left limbs, that wrist did not turn at all. And the fingers of that hand, had no fucnction at all. In order to bring both of the damaged bot's hands together, the medic gently held onto the left lower arm and brought it up to meet the right, which was held weakly under its own power.

Knockout should have been impressed with his own accomplishment, or at least it may have seemed like he should have been. He was of course doing a fair bit of the work himself, when it came to his far more functional arm. But still he only glared straight ahead of himself, with a look of clearly building rage in his optics.

"Let's try this again," Ratchet insisted. He was doing a perfectly fine job of ignoring, or perhaps simply seeing past the furious glaring. Seeing instead a patent still not quite as ready to give up so soon as it might have seemed at first glance.

The medic continued to gently hold onto the red bot's left wrist. He pulled his hand up slowly to meet the other one again. He said in a familiar tone of quiet, gentle firmness. "Remember what we talked about this morning? Your processor forgot some of your body's sense of motion. Movements can be relearned. So let's teach it this one."

A few more repetitions of the same motion, and the red bot finally screamed wordlessly in the rage and frustration he'd been directing toward the wall he'd been glaring at across the room.

"Try it again,. Just once more." came an urging response at once – this time from Arcee, who sat smiling, watching.

So many bots might had backed away nervous, at hearing a enraged scream like that, particular from a red-optic'd former 'con. But Arcee was doing just as fine of a job as Ratchet was, at seeing past the sheer frustration he was unable to stop himself from venting. The red bot did do his part in one more repetition of the motion again, but then he dropped his strongert arm to the recharge station one final time and gave a look that showed his utter refusal to continue on.

Ratchet retrieved an energon container, he'd set down on top of the worktable sometime before, when Knockout had refused to drink from it – another ongoing battle of wills over the last few days. Though thankfully he was become slightly more willing to fuel now, with the right amount of patient convincing.

Arcee took the container from the old medic before he even asked her too. They had learned already the past evening, what worked the best. She placed it into functional hand, and hold hers over his, so that she could help him lift it to drink from it. Even using only his far stronger right hand only, it would have been too heavy and awkward a thing to hold on his own, but the first time Ratchet had tired to make him refuel, on the second day, he'd held it to the red bot's mouth, while Knockout's still then almost entirely uncoordinated limbs did nothing at all. Knockout had only screamed incoherently with utter rage at his own helplessness, and had not even bothered with words. In hindsight of course that had been the trigger for his stubbornness over refueling, and thus the start of that battle of wills.

"Tell you what," Ratchet said, as Knockout slowly drank from the container, with Arcee somewhat awkwardly helping him hold it so he could do so. "If you can drink all of that with the next hour or so, I think later tonight I'll be able to disconnect your fuel line."

Removal of the very last of his life support measures was clearly the motivation Knockout needed, because he was able to drink nearly half of the container before he shook his head, not wanting any more right then.

"Well I have some overdue maintenance to do on the space-bridge," the old medic said as he stepped toward the medbay door. "Arcee, I think you've got this handled."

Arcee nodded. "No problem. I'll keep him company in here, and make sure he drinks this."

After Ratchet had gone, and Arcee had set the container aside for the moment, she reached for a portable computer she had stored in the empty bottom drawer of Ratchet's worktable.

"Want to do something with this?" she asked as she turned in her chair and held the device on her lap where Knockout could see it too.

He only made a motion somewhere close as he could get to a shrug of his sholders.

"June Darby sent over some more files of some Earth television." They'd spent some time the day before watching a few classic sitcom episodes she'd sent over with Agent Fowler. Knockout had clearly not gotten the point of comedy and had been quite unimpressed. "These might be better. These are educational films. Earth medical science, hmm..." she scrolled though the list of files with one finger on the little keypad, gang life in Detroit. Not sure why she'd think we might be even remotely interested in that… the mating habits of big cats in the wild… Oh an Astronomy film. You'd like that."

Knockout only sort of shrugged again. "Maybe later."

"If I can get this to connect to the internet, we can discover some random music videos online."

He looked slightly more interested in that, but then he just looked down at his knees.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine," Knockout's quiet, half mumbled reply was hardly convincing.

"You know you can always talk to me if you want to," Arcee tried slowly.

"I know," Knockout silently considered for at least a minute, before he said hesitantly, "I've been thinking lately about my old friend, Breakdown..."

"You probably don't remember," Arcee said, when Knockout's words died out in mid sentence. She set the computer aside. "I'm not sure you were anywhere close to fully conscious then. But early in the morning on day two, I came in here for a little while. You mumbled something to me, about having seen him, talked to him in some meeting hall on Cybertron."

"You must have assumed I was truly insane."

Arcee shook her head. "No. I do think it sounds a bit crazy, and it's certainly nothing anyone will ever be able to explain with science. But that hardly makes it any less real, or valid.

"Thanks."

"So, what was he like when he was still on line? All I really knew of him is that for whatever reason he and Bulkhead constantly wanted to bash each other heads in."

"He was..." Knockout fell silent again for a long moment as he considered how exactly to answer. "Good. Well good for a Decepticon. Breakdown had honor, a moral code. He believed that any bot on board the warship, no matter his rank or class, was still a bot and he was probably that only one that bothered speak nicely to troopers, energon miners, any of the low-lings. He hated the war for so long. Just wanted to to end, and I'm not sure he cared which side won it, as long as it just meant no more killing and damage. He asked me once what I would have been if Cybertron had never been at war, and I told him I was far to young to know what a world that would have been."

He stopped speaking and for a moment or two he just looked straight ahead at nothing of any great importance at all. Then he went on. "When he went off line, I guess I just kind of accepted it. I mean, I had assumed I'd be gone long before him. But still I just accepted that he was dead. Good bots die all the time in war. It's just how it goes. I regretted that I'd spent about as much time bossing him around and trying to make him buff my finish, than I had actually being grateful to still have one friend left. Still though, I understood that he was long gone, and that was that. Sometimes bad things happen. Get on over it.

"But the day his life signal somehow came back on line, I think that's when I started losing myself. The signal was so corrupted, something was obviously wrong. Breakdown had been pretty much my brother. I realized it was crazy and wrong of me to hardly care. When we found out MECH had found his body, and it was some human that had turned him into some not quite dead but long longer alive kind of mindless machine, I finally went and lost it. He was finally left to me after a failed mission and I was free to do as I would. I finally got a good look at what that… disgusting, depraved human…. had done. He was using the body of my best friend as a type of robotic vehicle, a means to keep himself alive in a human body that should have been dead. I killed him. Ripped that miserable fleshing to pieces even though it meant also further damaging Breakdown's already halfway to mangled body. That human's is one death I still cannot regret."

Without a thought Arcee leaned over so that she could rest her head against Knockout's right shoulder panel. "I can hardly tell you that revenge is only ever a destructive waste of our time and energy," she said, sighing. "I've spent years dreaming of getting some of my own. Some Autobots might not agree, but I can't exactly say that what you did was unjustified."

"Breakdown would have done the same for me in a single sparkbeat had things been different," Knockout said. Again he considered his words as he went on speaking. "He was always my protector. I never asked him to be, but he was anyway. I've lost track of the number of times he'd step in and save me from a beating, even if it meant using his fists to do so. Once in a while he'd end up locked in the brig for his trouble, but no one smart would dare try to beat him like they did me. He even did his best once to try to repair the damage after Starscream attacked me with his sword."

"He attacked you with a….?" Arcee couldn't even finish her sentence, and instead let her words die in the air. Her mouth hung open slightly in shock and she shuddered, although she tried not to do so.

Knockout nodded, silent again. His optics opened wider and he certainly looked quite terrified just thinking back. But he spoke again anyway, explaining. "He always liked to carry that fragging blade around out on the flight deck. Generally he'd use it to gesture in a given direction, to drive home his point when he explained attack strategy and flight formations to the troops. It rarely failed that some low-ling would talk back, or ask some stupid question, and he'd either put the sword right through their spark of just take the bot's head clean off. One day in the corridor of the ship, we had a bit of a confrontation. I hadn't even noticed he had that sword still on him..." Knockout cast his optics down toward his lap. "It obviously missed my spark, but it did… tear up a… fuel line under…. I'm sorry. I just can't think about this right now."

Arcee nodded in understanding. If he wasn't ready to talk much more, she was not going to push him. She sat herself back up straight and reached for the nearly forgotten energon container again.

"Think you can finish this now?"

When he nodded his agreement, she placed it in his hand and placed hers around his to lift it up, like before.

"Have you had yours yet?" he questioned, clearly concerned, as soon as he had finished the container.

"I'll go and grab mine in a bit. You look tired. Maybe you should lay down for a bit."

"No no, I'd much prefer to stay sitting a while." It was only the day before that Knockout was finally able to stay safely in anything resembling a sitting position at all. It make perfect sense that he would refuse to lay back down as long as he could, after so many days of laying down in any position he was placed in, and probably feeling quite perfectly helpless like that.

"You sure you aren't tired?"

Knockout shook his head a little. "Just incredibly bored."

"I can imagine," Arcee answered, sympathizing.

"Perhaps one of those educational films would be somewhat interesting," Knockout said. It was obvious he was trying so hard to stay positive, but quite understandably it was a difficult thing to do.

Arcee shot him a grin as she reached for the little computer again, so that she could hold it on her lap. "Okay, let's pick one to watch." She grinned at him again, if only in some nearly hopeless try at making him grin back. "After we're done watching, I'll see whatever became of your buffer. I should be able to get your finish shinned up nice again for you."

"I do look dull don't I?" Knockout looked so sad at the realization, that his reaction almost made her burst out laughing.

"Yeah, you really do. Ooh you must hate it."

The effort she was putting into not laughing actually made him laugh outright. It was certainly good to hear him laugh like that, even if she hadn't entirely meant to make him.

"I would certainly be grateful for a lovely finish again," he said, seriously. "Thank you."

"So, what do you wanna watch?" Arcee grinned.

"Hmm..." For a second Knockout started to consider. "How about… how a… bout… Ar...cee… I… I don't feel very..."

Arcee set the computer aside fast and turned her full attention back to him. She felt her fuel tank drop a little. He looked very suddenly unwell and was staring off across the room with black optics.

"Ratchet," she yelled toward the door. "We might need you!"

The old medic must have been close enough to the door to easily hear her, and her shout at him must have sounded urgent, because he rushed into the medbay within several seconds. He looked at Knockout silently and unmoving for a second, before he motioned for Arcee to step back a bit. She did so.

"Use those controls underneath here so we can get him laying down flat again." He gestured toward the little hand controls he was talking about, and she quickly followed instructions, while Ratchet placed his arms behind Knockout, supporting most of his weight against him.

"Knockout!" The red and white bot said urgently, yet calm as always. "You awake?"

"Yeah… no…" Knockout mumbled, making almost no sense at all "Now, where'd he leave my..."

"Okay, down we go." Ratchet gently let the red bot fell back, as he turned him so that he came to rest laying on one side.

"Ratchet," Arcee cried, alarmed. "What's happened? He was doing so well."

"He's just lost consciousness for a minute. Processor is still rebuilding itself. Of course this could happen at least a couple of times. He's okay. Let's just give him a second and see if he'll come back around."

Sure enough, it was under a minute before Knockout's optics began to blink a little, and then slowly brighten as they blinked again. He groaned in discomfort and momentary confusion as his body jerked itself too roughly, back into wakefulness.

"Hey," Ratchet, speaking to him while leaning down a little. "Any idea where you are?"

"Uh, Nevada..." Knockout half spoke and half mumbled an answer.

The old medic chuckled a little at that. "A bit vague I'd say, but yes this is Nevada. Just lie still for a bit, and then we'll see if we can't get you sitting back up if you want."

For a moment, Knockout did as he was instructed, and just stayed still where he was. But in another minute he turned his head a little so that it his face was mostly pressed against the surface of the recharge station. He mumbled something impossible to understand. His voice was trembling, and so was his body. His left arm, the far weaker of the two, had been inadvertently bent a bit awkwardly in the hurry to place him in a safe position.

"Knockout?" Arcee said slowly. She reached over top of his slowly, trying not to startle him, so that she could at least re-position him so his arm was not so painfully bent. She recognized at once, the appearance of a body shaking with frantic, if not at first nearly silent, sobbing cries. "Look at me, please. What's wrong?"

The only answer she got was another few horribly mumbled words, from a bot that refused to ever try moving to look at her. She wondered, in the next second, if perhaps he had been scared by the sudden drop from consciousness. Though it had clearly not been the same at all, could it still have been similar enough to remind Knockout of the recent glitching of his processor, which had from his point of view clearly been terrifying?

Finally he turned his head a little so that he could look at her. His face was covered in streams of washer fluid, and his body was still shaking from cries that would not stop. With his voice barely audible he mumbled horribly, "… might have been best if I had died."

"Now, that's ridiculous," Arcee said firmly, trying to be at least somewhat helpful, while at the same time she fought to hide her shock at hearing something she would never have expected to hear.

"Ratchet!" A loud, urgent human voice, recognizable as that of Agent Fowler, hollered from the next room. "Get your tailpipe out here. Now!"

The old medic ignored the shouting entirely, and instead focused his attention on a slight battle with a still slightly disoriented, shaken up, and strangely very emotional patient over a need to quickly scan him.

"Ratchet!" Agent Fowler hollered again, from the other side of the door. "I need you out here!"

"Frag it," Ratchet muttered. He handed Arcee his hand-held scanner, and stepped back a few paces shaking his head hard all the while. "What in the name of Primus is that slagging human shouting for. I already have a now very upset bot, and that fool is only making it worse."

"We have a situation!"

"Arcee," Ratchet said, with a look in his optics and a tone to his voice that both indicated he was mad as anything, and refusing to mistakingy take it out on either of the bots in the room. "See if you can get him to let you scan him quick for me." He smacked the transmitter button on the comm unit by the door. "Enough with the hollering already, Agent Fowler. We have comms in this base for a reason!"

"Ratchet," said Fowler, now using one of the comm units, but still almost shouting anyway. "I believe we might have a situation..."

"Huh. I've already got a slight situation in here," the old Medic snapped. "Unless this base is about to explode I suggest you..."

"One of your bots is outside of the base, correct?" The tone with which Fowler asked the question made Ratchet pause for a second and listen to him. Something really was wrong.

"Yes. 'Bee left a while ago. Went for a drive. Said he needed to clear his head..."

The old medic turned for a second do to look at Arcee, "can you deal with Knockout for a minute. I'm going to speak to Agent Fowler." Not even waiting for her to answer, he hurried out of the medbay.

Forcing herself to ignore a growing sense of unease over the conversation she had heard over comms and shouting, Arcee activated the scanner in her hand. She held onto it, but did nothing else with it.

"I think stressed out old bot would be an understatement," she said lightly glancing toward the door. "He's a wonderful old medic, but I swear one day he's going to blow out a gasket or worse."

She chuckled a little as she spoke, trying hard to make Knockout smile instead of his still helpless sobbing cries. But he only looked up at her helplessly. She set the scanner aside, leaving it still activated on top of the workable just within reach if she stretched a bit. What Knockout needed was certainly not a med-scanner at that moment. She helped him get into a comfortable position again, and then pulled a chair over closer, so that she could sit close to his level and talk with him.

"If I were still with the 'cons when all this happened, I would likely have been off lined at once." Knockout said. The cries had all but stopped now. His voice was calmer, but his face was soaked in the cleaner fluid and his hands shook. "Or perhaps just left to die in some back corner of the medbay, or left all alone in my living quarters."

Arcee forced herself to keep looking him in the optics, though she wanted to throw the closet object in silent rage at the harshness of the reality he was speaking of. She knew well the sparkless brutality of Decepticons. She knew full well that of course they would generally kill, or just throw away, their sick and dying. She had always found the notion quite disgusting and a show of their honor-less moral code. But now it was suddenly closer to home. Scrap, no wonder he was so upset.

"We would never have done that..." she said, needing to say something. Searching for the right thing to say. She never felt like she had ever been much good at such conversation. "That's just so very… wrong."

To her surprise Knockout shook his head a little. Did he disagree? Slowly he started speaking again, quiet, almost calm now. "I think they might have been right to do that, at least in my case."

"Knockout. No! You can't think that!"

"If this was old Cybertron, back before the war, or even long into it, I would likely have been offlined by the council. Yes, Decepticon thinking took it so much further, and that made it so fundamentally wrong. But in a case like mine, it was never only a 'con thing."

Arcee frowned. And then she fought back her frustrated rage. Knockout was right. She could not argue against fact.

"That was the past," she said. "That was the kind of corrupt backward idea of perfect functionalism, that may have lead to the start of this fragging war." Without even a thought she reached out to take both of his still trembling hands in hers.

"But a bot needs a function Arcee," Knockout said. His tone of increasing seriousness was making her uneasy. But she listened anyway, refusing to interrupt, determined to hear him out for longer. "I'll never be fully functional. If I were to regain eighty-five percent, I'd be very lucky. I'm a medic. It's no real secret that bots have always been quite shocked at this, but I actually do like my job. And anyway, it's really the only thing I was ever truly good at. Almost physically functional is just not good enough! Sure I'm relearning and I am impressed with that, but the council of the past would never have accepted eighty-five percent, not for a medi-bot. I could learn something new. I've always thought if I hadn't been a medic I might have been an artist, maybe a musician, something creative. But almost functional is not enough for those fields either."

"I think you're just far too hard on yourself," Arcee said, when he fell silent. She held his hands tighter.

"I know of a few quite efficient methods of off lining a broken bot," Knockout said. He was almost impossibly calm now. Speaking like a medic. Like he was simply having an almost theoretical discussion with colleagues in his field. "Many are perfectly painless and were once considered the 'caring' way. Even now, under modern law, or what passes for law in changing times, a bot has every right to choose to let it end. It's been great. No, it's been wonderful. And to go out as an Autobot… That's something to be truly proud of. I've lived. I've learned. I've done the best I could with what I had, until finally I actually found myself. Even f I were to reach ninety-five percent function, there will always been the mental stuff to live with and that alone would always make me at least a bit broken. I just can't be that anymore. It isn't fair to any of us… and there are so few good bots left…."

Arcee felt her fuel tank flip, and she felt like she was about to lose it's contents. This was not new, she realized. He'd really been thinking about this. And he'd certainly had a lot of time to lay part way to helpless and think. Before she knew exactly what it was she was doing, she had let has hands go and learned forward so that that she could throw her arms around his frame. She sat leaning over, with her head pressed against the side of his chest plate as her own body now began to shake with sobbing cries.

"You think it would be fair to me, for you to just give up?" she half begged and half screamed, as she held on tighter, refusing to let go of him.

"Ar...cee..." he said slowly, thoughtfully, and clearly far beyond confused. His left arm was of course far to non-functional to do very much with at all. But he managed to bring the right one up so that he could rest a hand over her. "I… didn't realize I would upset you. I wasn't try to… I'm thinking only of practicality."

"To the pit with your selfish practicality, you pile of scrap metal!" Arcee said, shocking him with her anger. But all the while she was still both crying hard and shaking, and it was only in the words that he could detect any idea of her anger at all.

It was at that moment that Ratchet walked back into the medbay. Both Knockout and Arcee were far too busy with their own emotions to even notice a hint of the shocked, and utterly baffled look on the old medics face at what he was seeing, and that was probably a good thing.

"I'm truly sorry to… oh…" he said, stammering with an awkwardness he was far from generally known for. His tone went quickly back to good old businesslike fast. Probably another good thing. "Arcee, it looks Fowler really meant it when he said we've got a situation."

She stood up at once, wiping at tears like a ridiculous youngling, and waiting for info.

"Looks like Earth may have 'con problem again," Ratchet said seriously. Thouhg he did brush a fingertip over Arcee's face-plate, in a compassionate attempt to wipe away stray tears without questioning it. "Bumblebee is under attack by several fliers out in the dessert."

"Sounds like he could use some back up," Arcee answered, almost surprised at how unsurprised she truly was at this development. It was all just the usual business and somehow that hardly seemed to bother her in the moment. There would be time later to question where exactly those 'cons had come from in the first place.

"Arcee," Ratchet said, yanking her toward a corner of the medbay as she tried to rush out, and doing so with surprising force. Quietly he almost whispered, "In the name of Primus, are you alright? Can I ask you later what that was all about?"

"I'm good," she said. She gently tugged her arm free of his, again the competent and capable front-line fighter. "We'll talk after I go save 'Bee's tailpipe and scrap a few 'cons."

 **Notes/ and again I'm just going to leave it here, at a cliffhanging and with everyone confused…. All because why not.** **I realize that chapter was actually a bit awkwardly done in a couple of parts, or at least I fear it was. I just could not for the life of me figure out to to better tie things together, or word anything. Hopefully it all actually makes sense.**

 **It's taking even longer than I planned now, to reach my wrap up chapters.** **Have I really done fifteen….** **It's becoming a full length ongoing project. Mah, who cares. It's still fun, so I'll just keep writing.**


	16. Chapter 16

Arcee raced out of the ground-bridge, engine revving, tires skidding across hot sand. She activated her brake, and shifted into her bot mode, still in the middle of her quick stop. Sliding slightly in a half kneeling position, she stopped herself quick with a well placed foot, and stood up fast. She tapped on her comm link.

"Close the bridge, Ratchet. I'm through," she said quickly, quietly, as she looked around quickly to survey the scene.

The sand of the Nevada dessert stretched on and on in any direction, broken here and there by red rock cliffs and falling canyons. A small river cut through the terrain. To her left, and some distance away there was a road. Unpaved, narrow, dusty. A green metal road-sign indicated a riverside campground nearby. Overhead small jet engines screamed and roared with without any real care or caution, and she counted at last ten 'con jet modes in the air, most of them flying low.

She spotted Bumblebee to her left and a slight run from where she stood. He was busy shooting at a pair of troopers in their bot modes on the ground, while at the some time he kept an optic to the sky, never losing track of the jets. Once in a while he would take the focus of his blasters from the ground troopers, so that he could shoot up over his head. He was shooting to intimidate, to wound and damaged if needed, but not to kill. 'Bee never had enjoyed off-lining any bot if retreat on either side of a firefight was still an option.

"Thanks for the backup," he said, when she had run over, and activated her own weapons.

"You think I would have let you have all the fun, Bee?" Arcee answered. A good aim and a fast shot from her left blaster sent a jet falling from the sky. The trooper was wounded but alive. He retreated with a gesture of surrender

"Nice shot," 'Bee said, as he aimed again.

"Slagging coward," Arcee growled in the direction of the fleeing 'con. And then looking at her teammate she yelled a frantic. "Look out!"

Bumblebee jumped to his right, instantly rolling to the side so that he could land a short distance away crouching near the ground unhurt and having missed the rapid fire of a flying trooper's onboard weapons.

"Thanks. Arcee, you know there's a campground near by?"

"Noted 'Bee. There will be humans everywhere. Priority one. Let's avoid mass causalities in this 'not their war' again."

From the sky overhead, and still flying crazily in every direction, four of the jet modes began to fire all at once on the pair of Autobots. Bumblebee and Arcee fired back as fast as they could. One of the jets fell from the sky, but three more kept firing. The rest just whizzed about in seeming confusion.

"These guys sure lack any organization today,"Arcee remarked, looking up at the chaos overhead. One of the jets dropped to the ground transforming as it fell. The trooper landed on his feet and fired, missing by meters. Arcee reduced it to a fallen heap with one shot of a blaster, and she had done so easily, barely looking, and to the side.

Another flier fell to her blaster. His faceplate was shattered, and his retreat was more a blinded stumbling off across the sand than any real run. But he'd be fine and she knew it.

A third identical jet fell from the air, at her hand. He was hurt much worse then others yet, but he'd live. She gave a mocking laugh at the cowardice of the troops they fought, as she watched him yell to an already retreating teammate. for help.

"Yeah you better run you little..." she muttered, aiming again.

"Arcee?" Bumblebee was shooting again in self defense, but still trying as she was, to only drive then back. "What is Primus' name is the matter with you?"

"Not a thing." She took aim at the furthest of the fliers, one flying almost beyond the range of her blaster, and heading toward the campground. She fired. He fell. Her range had been just enough. She gave a grin than was somewhere close to menacing rage.

"You're clearly upset."

"He was heading right for that campground. Innocent humans. Not their war. 'Cons with fraggin blasters ready to gun down families with kids. Of course I'm upset."

One more fell from the air. That time Arcee was sure she might actually have off-lined the bot. One more down. Another one dead.

Arcee saw Bumblebee looking up again at the sky. This time his attention was fixed on the north. She followed his line of sight and at once she caught sight of the white blue and red jet, coming in fast. Instead of firing weapons, this one was rolling and flipping in midair, without losing speed. It was headed right toward them and their ongoing battle.

"...And that would be Starscream," 'Bee muttered as he went on shooting at the overhead fliers.

"What the frag is he doing on Earth?" Arcee said, again with a growl of anger.

"What are any on those 'cons doing back here. But probably a question for another time. At least he's not shooting at us yet."

"No," Arcee answered. Her blaster took another trooper down. "He's a bit too busy showing off. 'Bee you keep these troopers busy. I'll be ready to deal with Starscream."

"Arcee you can't fight him on your own and I can't help you and still hold back his fleet. I think we need to cal for a bridge and run for it."

"He's got more than enough fire power to brutally slaughter a whole pile of innocent humans if he wanted to. I'm not calling retreat!"

"I don't think 'Scream could care less about those humans out enjoying a weekend camping trip. Killing them is not his motivation.," Bumblebee said. One more trooper down. The rest began to fly with far less order than before, whizzing about in any old direction without any seeming rhyme or reason to it. "That wouldn't make any sense..."

But Arcee only but him off, as she fired again, and dodged a blaster beam. "'Bee don't you make me pull rank."

She did technically outrank him. Bumblebee gave up his argument. Arcee cursed out loud as a short and rapid burst of blaster fire rained down over both of them.

"Arcee, were you hit?"

"Barely. Left lower leg. Bounced off my armor. I'm good. We've got to just keep going."

Starscream was above them almost before they noticed he had gotten so close. He dove from the sky, transforming almost dangerously close to the ground. It was nearly inexplicable how he managed to land, perfectly balanced on his feet.

"Ah, the Autobot called Arcee," he said, with a tone of mocking friendliness that instantly made Arcee's energon run a couple degrees cooler. He'd obviously chosen her as his target, just as she had chosen him as hers. "It certainly has been a little while. A moment perhaps to…. catch up?"

Arcee only stared him down. Her optics narrowed and she would have burned holes clear through his plating if only she could have, with her look alone. She kept her blasters at the ready, and it was only with great effort and her commitment to think like an Autobot, that stopped her from blowing his head off before she gave him the fair chance her faction so believed in.

"You wouldn't kill me, Autobot," he said. His tone was clearly mocking. "Not while you have another way."

"Don't tempt me," Arcee growled back. She narrowed her gaze further, and took a quick and sure step toward him. "Last I knew of you and your fate, you should surely have been stripped down to spare parts by Predaking. Then 'Bee found your signal on Cybertron, so clearly you somehow escaped. Too bad. He should have ripped the spark clean from your frame."

"Ohhh, such harsh words from an Autobot. So very violent you've become, Arcee."

"You're one to talk about violence, Starscream," Arcee growled. She let her face-plate reflect every bit of the boiling rage she'd felt since her feet had hit the ground-bridge. She took another step forward, aware of the weapon that was pointed, if not somewhat carelessly, on her.

"Me? Violent?" Starscream made an overly exaggerated gesture of completely and utter bewilderment, and pretended to shrink back in disbelief. "I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about…. Oh… wait. You must mean that whole killing your partner thing."

"Him, and every other innocent bot you've ever had a hand in slaying over countless years," Arcee roared. Her fury burned in her optics. One more step forward, advancing toward him. Any remaining regard she might have had for his weapons, was all but gone.

Starscream may well have expected that Arcee would shoot at him, or at least she would try to before he retreated or fired on her. What he hadn't expected is that she would instead deactivate her right hand blaster so that she could slam a tightly clenched fist into the side of his face-plate. While he stared at her with his mouth falling open in shock, she punched him again.

"You… you stupid fool Autobot!" Starscream bollowed. He took an almost comically frantic step backwards. His heads where in front of him at once. "How dare you strike the Lord and Master of the Decepticon empire! I could tear you into scrap for that!"

For several seconds, Arcee only laughed at him, while he tried to stare of down with his own growing rage.

"Lord and Master? Empire?" Arcee spat. Her fury driving her to mock him, while he stepped back toward her. He may have been considerably small, but still he was bigger than she was, and far stronger. None of that mattered as she growled in mockery, "Your 'mighty empire' is nothing now. The war is over and you lost. You're nothing by a selfish, spoiled, twisted, pathetic, little murdering slag pile."

"I'll take your head clean off for that little rant, Autobot. I should have killed you and your weak little friends eons ago. My greatest mistake was to think I should have been merciful to those less than myself."

 _Ha, and we once called Knockout arrogant._ Arcee held her tongue, keeping that thought to herself. She knew it would be unwise a thing to say to someone who wanted the defector dead. Instead she went for a good hard kick to the front of his plating, almost letting herself think she could actually knock him backwards to the ground. Of course he didn't fall. Instead he advanced on her quickly and got in a couple of punches and a kick of his own before she promptly blocked a third hard blow with her arm.

"Are you sure you wish to continue this foolishness, Autobot?" Starscream demanded. He dealt a few more rapid blows, only half of which were deflected. "Surely you are more than aware of my skill in unarmed combat. And you do recall how last time you challenged me, it was you who lost badly, and wounded!"

"I lost because you tricked me, you worthless cheating coward," Arcee growled at him. Optics narrowed and glaring. For all her confidence, she knew he was far from lying about his skill. He could well beat her, and probably kill her when he was finished. A small part of her awareness screamed at her to listen, to stop, that the 'con right right about it being only foolishness. But the much larger part of her processor, which was now driving only by inexplicable rage, drove her to ignore any good sense at all.

"Troopers," Starscream yelled, over the sound of the blaster fire and Arcee had nearly stopped hearing entirely. "Hold your fire. Stop shooting at that Autobot you idiots. Let me handle this myself. I want to let that little black and yellow one watch while I destroy his friend here!"

Arcee heard the silence as the weapons-fire stopped. Form the edge of her field of vision, she saw Bumblebee step toward her, his blasters now taking aim past her and straight at Starscream.

"'Bee, don't," she said, her voice even. Her rage was never meant for him. "His team is holding their fire and so will you." She turned her attention once more to the Decepticon commander. "This creep is being honorable for once."

Starscream flung a fist forward, with great speed and force. Arcee stumbled back a couple of steps as it struck her shoulder panel with a terrible metal on metal clanging noise. A backhand across her face-plate sent her off balance and falling backward to the ground. He planted a couple of hard kicks to her side panel, before planting a foot right on her chest-plate.

"You should have killed me, Arcee, when you had a chance," Starscream said, almost laughing. He looked down at her and stared her in the optics. "You've had many chances. All of you have. And yet somehow you never could..."

"I don't take any great joy in slaughtering my fellow Cybertronians." Arcee spat her words at him, even as his foot pressed down harder. The threat of crushing her panel under part of his landing gear was more than clear. "I'm not a Decepticon. I don't need to kill without mercy."

"Too bad. You would have done so well on my side of the war." Starscream's expression looked far too serious. Arcee's rage reached well beyond boiling point.

"How dare you imply I could ever have been anything like you!" She screamed her words, even as his weight rested harder on her panel. "You're nothing more than a twisted, psychotic, broken bot without even a cause left to fight for."

"'Bee, don't," she snapped fast, when she saw Bumblebee again aim his blaster, out of the corner of her vision. She saw him step back. Saw the blaster lower again. Just barely saw the glimpse the uncertainty on her teammate's faceplate, as he wondered what exactly he should do. She shoved back her fury just enough to realized that Bumblebee was more than likely to break rank and shoot against her orders any second.

"Get off of me, you good for nothing scrap heap," she hollered as she grabbed Starcscream's lower leg and jerked her arms toward her. The motion was so sudden, it sent him stumbling. He hit the ground hard enough to just slightly shake the dessert around them, and landed awkwardly in a graceless pile of long metallic limbs.

"You… you stupid, ridiculous Autobot fool," he sputtered, as he struggled to his feet His motion spilled sand from the complex circuitry behind his wings. "What kind of pathetic move is that… you… you..."

"Efficient," Arcee answered, still glaring at him, as she jumped quickly onto her own feet. She hurried toward him and before he could block, while he still shook loose sand grains, she dealt him a few rapid kicks to his front. He punched back once, but she was quick. Grabbing his arm before he could strike her, she twisted it back so that he visibly bit back a scream of pain. She let go, laughing in his face. Her laughter stopped abruptly and she growled in a tone uncharacteristic of any Autobot, "We could have done a fine job of living in peace. You could have been part of it. You could have helped us instead of serving your own self interest for once in your miserable pathetic life."

"Turn Knockout over to me," Strarscream yelled, in the midst of his returned flurry of punches and a few more kicks. "I might just let you live."

"I'd never turn him in just so you could kill him for the crime of thinking for himself," Arcee snapped. She punched again and dodged what could have been a very dangerously placed kick. So that's what Starscream had been after all a long. She'd figured so.

"Tell me Autobot..." More kicks, more punches, and the now constant clanging of metal against metal. "Why do you care what happens to him? He's arrogant, selfish, he'll ever really be an Autobot. You of all bots should be happy just to once again be rid of him."

Arcee was almost lost for any words in reply. Her rage was quickly giving way to confusion over everything he had forced her to consider. Starscream was wrong. He may never know just how wrong he was, but she was hardly going to waste her time trying to convince him of that or anything else. When the words she might have wanted never came after another several long seconds she threw herself forward in reckless fury and let the force behind her own body knock the 'con back to the ground. In under a second she was leaning over him, wordless shouting her rage, and raining punches down onto his face-plate, as if that would be enough to wipe away his horrible smirk.

"Did you forget, Arcee, what Knockout did to your friend Bulkhead's human pet?" Staracream snarled at her, as she hit him again. Something in his tone, in the words themselves showed that he was getting desperate for anything he could grasp to scare her away. It only made her punch him again harder.

"You idiot," she roared, finding her voice again at last. "You dare point at him, when it was you that did the very same to my own human partner! Knockout was so clearly sorry for it. When will you be?"

Somehow, in the midst of her relentless blows, and while he managed to get in a couple of his own, the 'con had the nerve her smirk at her again. He even laughed in her face as he said, a little too causally, "hardly changes that fact that he was still involved, in that little Cybertron hostage incident, now does it?"

He finally threw her off, and again both were back on their feet in under a second. Once again they faced each other. Once again neither was backing down.

"He was only so terrible and sparkless, because you made him that way!" Arcee proclaimed. The energon inside her body was surely at the point of boiling by then. She could feel her plating heating up dangerously from the strain of her emotions that she could not get rid of, and the exhaustion she was quickly driving herself to. She could barely see anything beyond what was right in front of her. Every sound that might have existed in the dessert around here was gone entirely. She only heard her own voice as she went on yelling. "It was you and that horrible, evil master of yours. You corrupted the sparks and the minds of half of Cybertron.. Made young bots want to kill and cause pain. Made them want to hate. And when they get scared, when they get soft, when they get sick, or they think you might have been wrong, you leave them all for scarp like they were nothing! How many were there that might have been like your medic? How many might have had a dream once before they lost the chance to have a choice but to either kill for you or die!"

"Oh, I've had about enough of you, Autobot!" Arcee heard Starscream shriek.

He went for his weapon before either Autobot could react. He was pointing it low, nearly at the ground, and was barely even aiming at all. The noise of a single blaster beam tore through the air before for a fraction of a second. Starscream had jumped into the air, transformed with rapid speed, and flown away into the sky before anyone else even moved. The remaining troopers quickly retreated after him.

"Arcee..." Bumblebee said slowly. He stepped toward her, but he was quite strangely looking down toward the ground. The look on his face-plate was enough to make her look down as well and follow his gaze.

It was then that she realized she was standing in a steadily growing pool of energon, as it flowed from her lower right leg. She could barely see her own foot under the steady stream of glowing blue that poured over it.

"'Bee, I've sustained damage..." she said, knowing full well she was quite stupidly stating the obvious.

"Yeah…. You definitely did..." her teammate's voice was surprisingly collected as ever for a bot as young as he was. But there was obvious anxiety behind it all the same. Without wasting another second he carefully quickly lifted her right off the ground and gently carried her a slight ways so that he could set her down again with her back leaning against huge boulders at the base of a huge cliff. Arcee looked around idly, and understood they were now both protected by the cliff's overhang high above, and hidden from the road – as if that mattered now after all the weapons-fire and noise to make any nearby humans notice.

"Scrap," she mumbled, letting her head fall back to rest against the rocks behind her, as her processor finally caught up to itself and began to register pain. A field first aid kit was standard equipment, carried by every member of the Autobot troops. And 'Bee retrieved his from his storage compartment quickly.

"It'll be alright," he said, pulling the contents quickly out of the kit. He'd already sat himself down on the ground, and was trying to look at her optics while still looking down.

"I didn't think 'Scream was gonna fire a weapon like that," Arcee muttered. "Stupid me. I thought for once he would fight with honor."

"You're far from stupid, Arcee. But trying to fight Starscream on your own, thinking you could beat him that way..."

"I know it was a pretty dumb move. I just got so mad. Anger's always made me stupid. 'Bee… I think this may be more than just minor damage."

She saw Bumblebee nod once, with a serious expression, as he began to wrap a temporary metallic wrapping around her ankle joint. Clearly he was trying not to hurt her any worse, but she knew just as well such things were generally unavoidable. "His blaster fired at very close range. Looks like the beam was about halfway to blowing your foot right off."

"Scarp," Arcee mumbled again. The more seconds that past, the more she wanted to feel even stupider than she already did for her so clearly bad call. But she knew full well that the time to beat herself up was not then. Instead she looked down, trying to assess the damage a bit herself. There was not much to see under a still pouring energon flow. All she could tell for sure is that at least one joint was bent too far to the right, and something below that just looked wrong in a way her processor would not even let her register at all. "It's still bleeding so much. Somehow this kinda thing never bothers me when I'm trying to do field repairs on someone else."

"Arcee, I'm going to call for a bridge in a minute, alright," Bumblebee said, as he kept working with quick efficiency. "Ratchet will bridge us back to base, and he'll want to repair you right away."

She only nodded at him mutely and leaned her head back again. The desert landscape around her started to spin a bit and she forced her optics to stay open. Her frame, heated by the rage and exertion of not so long before had began to cool, and she now felt far too cold instead of far too hot. She shook a little as her body tried hard to warm itself back up. For a second her vision went white, and then she saw the sand and cliffs again.

"Ready to ground-bridge," 'Bee spoke again, and it took her at least a few seconds to realize he had at all. By the time his words made sense he was already running forward to a spinning vortex. He'd picked her up again, but she had no idea when he'd done that. When, for that matter, had he comm'ed back to base for the bridge in the first place?

"'Bee, I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I made a bad call. I shouldn't have tried to pull rank like that, when I knew you were right about retreating..."

"Hey, stupid calls happen," the small black and yellow bot said. "I just wish it hadn't ended this badly."

She was aware of motion as she was carried quickly through the bridge. For a fleeting second she saw the swirling of blue all around her before the swirling lights she had seen countless times, suddenly made her fuel tank flip in her frame. Closing her optics helped greatly with the sickening dizziness. But she quite clearly drifted off again briefly, because the next thing she was aware of, looking around again, to see the spinning and distorted view of the inside of the medbay.

"Ow, frag it," she mumbled, when 'Bee had put her down, gently as possible on top of the repair table, with her feet straight in front of her. She was fully registering pain now as she tried to look around a bit and it all just kept on spinning.

"I tried to deactivate her pain receptors before I brought her back here," Bumblebee was saying, with his voice now coming from somewhere behind her.

"Hmm… it looks like some severe damage to at least a couple of important sensory connectors here. Pain receptors may not fully disable due to such damage. At least you were still able to get a partial disconnection, or she'd be far worse off," Ratchet was explaining calmly from much closer to her. She tried to look at him, at least for a second. But her vision was not co-operating and the harder she tried the dizzier it seemed to make her.

"'Bee, how long has she been drifting off and partly conscious like this?" the old medic asked next.

"Maybe ten or fifteen Earth minutes," the younger bot said. His calmness was still more than a bit impressive. "She managed not to fall and do more damage. I got her into a safe sitting position. But she was half asleep and shaky by the time I called for the bridge."

"The most pressing issue here is massive fuel lose. She's bleeding out energon very badly. It doesn't look like there's much else to worry about other than head to foot dents and a few bad scratches."

She folded both hands lightly in fists and forced herself to stay still, as Ratchet poured cleaner over her badly damaged lower leg and foot. She opened her optics again, found herself much less dizzy for the moment and tried to assess her own injuries again. The steady flow of lightly glowing blue from some obviously bad damage barely seemed to be stopping. It would not have bothered her had it not so obviously been her own that her lower leg was covered in. That might well have been what made her dizzy and sick again, on top of the fuel lose this time.

"I didn't notice when you started working on..." she started to say, but stopped when Ratchet gently took hold of her arm.

"Well just lay back and hold still now so I can keep working," he said, serious but still not without compassion either.

"Just intake for a bit," the old medic said after another second. "You're alright."

Arcee was far from new to damages sustained in a lifetime of endless battles. Limping, barely rolling forward still in vehicle mode, or being dragged or carried back to a base and the medbay was probably far ore common a thing that it should have been, had her life been an ideal one. Still though, the natural tendency toward a small degree of fear and panic never fully went away in such a situation. And it was only in the moment that she remembered just how bad it always was. She forced her focus toward taking in air and letting it back out again, only to do the same thing a couple more times.

"Is this as bad as it looks?" she managed to ask.

"Well I believe you've now beaten your own personal record for the worst you've ever gotten scrapped. But it's hardly anything I can't fix."

"Fair enough," Arcee said, with her optics shut again. Her hands stayed as they were, folded into fists, and she put some great effort into not yelling as the old medic continued on working with the cleaning solution.

"What's happened?" Arcee recognized that new voice speaking as Knockout's. His tone was a mix of confusion and great concern. He also sounded half asleep himself. Arcee tried to look toward him next, but her visuals were still spinning badly, as soon as she experimentally opened her optics yet again.

"I… I'm okay," she said, fearing at once that she must have sounded as out of it as she felt. "Things just didn't go as I planned."

"Arcee," Ratchet said. She felt his hand lightly on her arm again and tired once again to see something clearly. The red and white of his armor held her focus a bit at the very least. "Your damage is right at the borderline of where I may or may not want to power a bot down for repairs. But with your pain sensory network clearly still not doing what we'd like, I'm leaning well toward the option to power down."

Arcee only nodded silently, agreeing.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break**

"Well everything looks good," Ratchet said, helping Arcee to sit herself back down on the repair table with her legs danging in front of her, after she had talked a couple of careful, experimental steps forward and then stepped back. "You'll be able to walk a bit, as long as you don't put much weight on your repaired foot for a little while. How does it feel? Any pain?"

Arcee shook her head a little. "Just a slight throbbing ache. It's not too bad. Ratchet, thank you for..."

"Just doing my job." The old bot gave a rare little smile at her, before he held up a finger and shook it at her in preemptive warning. "Now, just because you _can_ walk decently well, doesn't mean I want to do so much for the next couple days. I better be seeing you sitting on chairs and benches when you aren't in your recharge station, and I'd like to see that healing foot up, instead of dangling like that or flat on the floor."

Arcee nodded, and then felt a bit silly, but knew better than to say a thing about it, as the old bot helped her position herself back on the now inclined repair table with her feet stretched out in front of her again. She all but rolled her optics in compliant, when he moved to place a pillow under the damaged foot and ankle, and gave an audible laugh, when he paused to fluff it a bit with his hands first. He handed her a medical grade energon container, and though she far preferred good old semi-refined fuel, she understood the need after losing so much of her own fuel supply, and the shock to her systems.

"So," she said, after she had drank a few sips and made a face at the medic over it. "What's my damage report look like."

"Well aside from a blaster nearly blowing you right foot off, and busting your ankle joint in two places above that, I fixed up at least six considerable dents anywhere between your head and hip joints. The worst of those was the front of you chest panel, where it looked like any more force might have compromised your spark chamber." Ratchet looked far from impressed. That was more than confirmed when he huffed once, shook his head and then stared at her with an admonishing look. "Arcee, Bumblebee explained to me that you tired to take on Starscream in hand to hand combat, like you were ready to roll with the wreckers! What the frag were you thinking?"

Arcee looked around the medbay, at first saying nothing at all. She glimpsed Knockout, in his now sadly familiar place at the far side of the room. He was laying flat on top of his recharge station, optics closed and not moving.

"Is he alright?'" Arcee questioned, her concern perhaps far too obvious.

"He's fine. Lost consciousness again for a minute, while we were in the middle of a conversation, not very long before you got back here. Still looks like simple processor rebooting. Now he's just in recharge. Arcee, don't think for half a second I'd let you get away with dodging my question."

Arcee lowered her gaze, to look down toward her hands resting on her knees. "I know what I did… or tried to do, and actually thought for a minute I could… was stupid of me."

"Now, I'm not asking you to go beating yourself up over some stupid lapse in good judgment. We've all made probably far more than our fair share of mistakes," Ratchet said. He waited for her to finally look back up at him before he went on. "I'm asking you why you did it. What drove you to such rage, that you actually believed you stood a chance?"

"I… I don't know," Arcee answered, mumbling and forcing herself not to stare at her knees again. "I guess I just got angry..."

Ratchet pulled up a chair and sat himself down on it, so that he could sit facing her. He gave a serious look, that clearly indicated he would wait all day to hear her answer, but would not simply drop it. "I'm a right in assuming there may just be a connection between this poor judgment of yours, and that obvious little spill of tears before you bridged out? You did promise you would explain that bit later."

"Ratchet, you're probably busy," Arcee said. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine now"

"I'm never that busy, I can't sit a minute and talk to a teammate who clearly needs to chat a minute." The old bot so obviously was genuinely concerned about her. Arcee glanced toward Knockout, still quietly recharging.

"Oh I doubt very much we'll wake him up anytime soon," Ratchet said, realizing her worry. "We could go and chat in my office if you really wanted to, but I see no real need. Processor rebooting will generally leave a bot a bit quite tired for a while. It's unlikely much will wake him up now that I've convinced him to recharge. But I assure you, it's not nearly as scary as it probably looks to a bot not in the medical profession. Now, we've established that you were angry. Though based on the hits it looks like you took and it sounds like you barely even noticed, I'd say that's a given. Why?"

"I just was," Arcee said, heplessly. She considered her words carefully at first, hesitant. But once she began to explain, she could barely stop her words from pouring from her mouth. "The war was supposed to be over. We're rebuilding. Shiploads of our people are coming home. We all just stupidly assumed it was over because we ended it. It takes both sides to end a war, and 'Bee is right. Starscream doesn't want to stop. I would have thought he'd be as tired of the fighting as any of us are. You know, I hardly think he even knows what he was ever fighting for. I don't think he cares. He's in this for power alone, and he'll never be stopped. I never thought in all my years, I'd see the day Megatron of any bot, would see his own wrongs and just walk away from his own evil cause. But nothing was ever done about his next in line, and I'm almost sure he's even worse!"

"Arcee. Starscream has always been a bit of a wrench in the system, for both sides of the war. Unpredictable. His very sanity entirely questionable. I think by now we all realize how sadly some bots are simply beyond hope of redemption. The only way to stop him will be to eventually destroy him, I'm sure. But that doesn't mean you could ever do it on your own."

"I know. I know." Arcee's optics began to spill cleaner fluid again, before she could stop it. She tried to drop her gaze down to hide her tears, and she felt confused and ridiculous. But Ratchet gently placed the fingertips of one hand under her chin to lift her head back up, making her look at him again. She forced herself to speak, and inwardly berated herself for the still flowing tears. "Starscream made Knockout what he became, or at least he had a huge part in it. Made him terrified. Crushed his spark and made him broken. Ever since that day I went find him for you, and I heard him wake up screaming from yet another of his endless nightmares..."

"You wanted revenge?" It wasn't entirely a question.

Arcee only nodded, and wiped a hand over her optics helplessly. "I… I know it would never fix anything. But today Knockout told me his life should end, and it was not all because he may be left disabled from the failure of his processor. He can't stand the constant flashbacks, the fear, the fact that he's killed and hurt people to save his own tailpipe. Ratchet, I don't understand even why the idea of such a choice made me so sad and then so enraged. I know it's his right to..."

Ratchet gave her a strange look. One that she so rarely if ever saw on his face-plate and one that she could not read. He looked her in the optics and asked quietly, calmly and curious, "When we split up the team recently, why did you insist you stay with us here on Earth? Knockout asked you to, yes, but it was pretty clear you would have in any case. There was a ship to be met. Bots to be shown around the base. Endless paperwork. And I know full well how you hate to be away from work that could help in the rebuilding efforts."

"I… I just couldn't stand the thought of leaving him behind. I knew the other bots would be fine, and I'm only a space-bridge away if needed. Knockout was barely conscious, still in severe pain, terrified, realizing his body wasn't working, and he was asking for me of all bots in the base. How could I just run off and go dig through rubble and work on fixing the roads? I… I'm still glad I stayed. I thought of going back home days ago, since I'm less needed here now, but I still couldn't imagine leaving him…."

"And just when are you going to actually admit that you quite possibly love him?" the old bot questioned. His face-plate was serious and his optics showed understanding without a hint of judgment in them.

"I don't… that's just not… I…," Arcee stammered her words for at least half a minute, like a youngling without a clue of how to form a complex sentence. The old medic only nodded once a clearly look of knowing in his optics, as she began crying again. "I was always so focused on winning a war. I never even considered that I would ever love anyone really. Why is it the one I found when I wasn't even trying had to be a former enemy? We might have tried to kill each other once without another thought. I… I can't just let him give up..."

"Arcee, Knockout and I talked about that very thing after you bridged out. He said he didn't understand why you were holding on to him so tightly and crying like that. I told him that off-lining is his right of course. But I also made it clear that I'm personally against it, and I think I speak for the entire team on that. I don't think he's finished living, so much as tired of pain. He agreed with me. He's going to keep on trying to live."

Arcee smiled at the medic's words, but could not find the words herself, to give any reply. Ratchet took the now empty energon container from her and went on speaking. "The war did so much damage, not only to our world itself, to to our society. Cybertron was not always divided into factions that were just supposed to hate each and barely know why. You might be just old enough to remember the world as it used to be. Knockout might remember it too. Now I think you should rest in here for a while, before I let you go back to your own room. Bumblebee asked while you were still in power down, for a team meeting later about this attack in the desert. You will attend it, _sitting_ with your foot _up."_

For some time after Ratchet had left the medbay, Arcee lay down under now dimmed lights and tried to follow his orders to rest a while. But no matter how she tried, she simply couldn't fall into even light recharge. She closed her optics and kept the shut, while she tried to get herself comfortable. But that was seemingly quite impossible. And it didn't help in the lest, that she couldn't seem to stop her racing thoughts. She tried to turn a bit to lay on one side, but that was impossible to do with her foot still resting on top of the pillow, and any try at keeping it up a bit in a new position, caused short stabs of pain to shoot up through the wiring in her lower leg. Eventually she gave up on resting, and sat herself up again, using the hand control at the head of the repair table, to incline the top section again.

"You should be resting, Arcee," a voice admonished from across the room. She looked over to find Knockout, quite clearly awake himself now and laying flat with his head turned a little so that he could look in her direction. She wonder if spacial relation, and left and right were finally making more sense to him, or if he had simply heard her move and turned in the direction of a sound.

"I am resting," she said, with a roll of her optics. "I'm just sitting up, and not exactly in recharge. How are you doing now? Ratchet said you..."

"Out like a light again?" Knockout nodded slowly, and gave an optic roll of his own. "Unfortunately. Trying to reboot at random it seems. Ratchet said more than once it's nothing to be scared off, but from my perspective it's always pretty scrapping scary anyway."

"You are far stronger and braver than I am," he said smiling at her with a look of unmistakable admiration, when she looked at him sadly, and sympathetic. "Ankle joint and foot nearly blown apart, and all you say is ouch, and then you ask if it's bad. I've worked on so many bots that would have been screaming in pain over less than that. Primus knows I would have!"

Arcee carefully moved so that she could swing her legs over the edge of the repair table and then slowly stand up. She let her weight rest on her uninjured foot as she even more carefully took a few steps so that she could sit herself down in the chair beside Knockout's recharge station. She pulled her foot up to rest it on part of the metal frame underneath, so that she could keep it up, and follow medical orders.

"You need to be resting..." Knockout began to admonish again. He took a moment to study her optics, before he said, "I think you're in far more pain than you're letting on."

"Honestly yeah. But I'll be alright. And I can just as well sit and rest here, as I can over there." She looked him in the optics for a long moment, saying nothing, before she finally asked in a serious tone, "you know what I would call true courage and bravery?"

The red bot shook his head a little and look at her. She went on. "You stared your own very possible end right in the face recently as you felt your own processor failing badly, and calmly told me you were ready. How's that for courage? You lead the Autobot team out of a crashing warship minutes after pretty well assuring Starscream would end up later signing your death warrant for defecting. How about not panicking and getting bots possibly killed at that building site on Cybertron? Or facing months, probably years of nightmares and getting up to just keep going?"

"Arcee, come here," Knockout said, as he lifted his right arm so that he do do his best at hugging her. She leaned over so that she could rest again with her head against his chest-plate as she had done earlier that day. "I heard you talking with Ratchet. Well some anyway. I woke up but I didn't wish to interrupt… It wasn't my intention to eavesdrop."

"Sorry if we woke you up," Arcee answered, apologetically. She stayed where she was for a long moment, just letting him try his best to hold onto her. After a second however, a realization dawned and she felt her spark flash with her growing embarrassment. That feeling evolved fast into dread and she tried to sit herself back up.

"How much did you..." she mumbled, as she still tried almost too halfheartedly to pull herself up. He still held onto her with the one arm he had good use of. His hand warmed her body armor as she began to grow cold and she wondered why.

"More than I'm sure I was meant to," he said, speaking quietly and with every bit of the confidence many who knew him far less would have expected in a second, gone entirely. "I love you too. I think I have since that day we sat together one the edge of the well. Or maybe it was the morning you talked to me in the medbay and you said you actually trusted me..."

"I know you can't get that other hand up high enough to give me a proper hug, so I'll just hold that one instead," Arcee said, as she reached for his left hand gently.

"I have so little to offer you in the way of a good life..."

"Knockout," Arcee snapped with a laugh and coolant in her optics again, she shook her head the best he could with it still pressed against his armor and him clearly not planning on letting her go. "We're rebuilding our whole fragging planet! No one has anything to offer anyone anymore but the hope of starting over together."

 **Notes/** **RoboDiamondDragon09 commented on** **c** **e that they wanted to see Arcee and Starscream fight** **at same point** **.** **It seemed like it could be fun and funny to write such a thing, so implied challenge accepted.** **I simply needed somewhere to logically fit it in.** **I hope** **I wrote something like you were hoping for.**

 **Okay…** **since when did I start writing sappy romance.** **I did it this once. Can't be sure I'll ever do it again…. Maybe… ?**


	17. Chapter 17

Knockout had been moved to the common room of the base. He sat up in the place Ratchet and Bumblebee had placed him, sitting up on the bench closest to side wall. It had taken a bit of thinking to make it work, but it seemed it worked best to lean his far weaker left arm against the armrest so that the structure of the bench could hold him up, and let him still use his right hand as he wanted. He was sitting completely upright for the first time in over an Earth week. The expression of pride in his optics at his accomplishment was more than obvious. Already he'd spent a good couple of minutes, marveling out loud at the fact that his feet were flat on the floor again, even if he may never gain be able to stand or walk, and was nowhere near ever trying to relearn.

"On the subject of two feet on the floor," Ratchet huffed, exchanging a look if annoyance with 'Bee, who stood beside him. "Arcee, why do you have both of yours on the floor like that, not fifteen hours after I told you to keep that damaged one _up?"_

The old medic, shaking his head and thinking, reached up over the railing that surrounded the human area of the common room. With one hand he picked up a properly sized piece of human furniture, an empty bookshelf, that he reasoned Arcee could use as a foot rest. Ratchet glared at her, staring her down in frustration. Bumblebee promptly joined in, doing the very same thing from his place near the computer terminal. Arcee lifted her foot, to prop it up at once, taking the hint well. But by the time she had done so, Knockout was very obviously glaring at her right along with the other two bots.

"Is it wrong of me to feel ganged up on?" Arcee questioned with a laugh. She shook her head, unsure which of her teammates she should actually be glaring right back at.

"Huh, and just how many times have I faced your own death glare at me, in the past weeks?" Knockout countered at once, with a laugh of his own. He smirked at her as he lifted his energon container with his stronger hand so that he could drink from it.

His left arm was still nowhere near being helpful in such a task, but he could hold a container just fine with the right hand and lift it. With the ability to refuel by himself, had also immediately come the end of his fussing and stubbornness over doing so. It was always more than obvious just how much he disliked taking a container, or for that matter any object from a bot that carried it to him to hand it over. But at least he was learning to accept and even ask for help even if he so clearly hated needing to.

"Point sadly taken," Arcee conceited. She sipped from her own container.

A bleeping sound from the central comm unit wired into the computer set up at the front of the room was the thing that eventually put an end to his uncharacteristically patient and determined tries at moving, instead of a typical bout of growing frustration. Bumblebee, who had been closest to the control board immediately accepted the communication and activated the room's view-screens.

"Call from our teammates on Cybertron," he announced at once. "Just in time for that team meeting."

The monitor clicked on and relieved a mostly clear, though somewhat low quality image of the inside of their base on their home-world. Arcee waved happily toward the monitor, knowing of course that if she could see them, they would see her too. 'Bee immediately joined her in waving at the team. On the monitor, Smokescreen and both Wreckers nodded their greetings.

"Hey, great to see and talk to you guys again," Bumblebee said to the monitor. "How are things on your end?"

"That latest ship arrived four days ago," Bulkhead explained from the Cybertron base. He appeared to read a screen in front of him. Obviously double checking notes and reports. "Forty-nine bots on board. "Housing building five was completed the next day, and we've assigned most of the new refugees apartments in there. More than one of the newest group and a few already here for months have requested licenses to set up shops nearby. We've granted them of course and given them space to build on the main strip behind most of the so far existing housing. Soon enough this place will be at the end of a wide street filled with goods markets, a couple of energon bars, and a gaming hall."

"This little part of the planet is really going to grow fast now, with all the new bots coming home," Smokescreen added, with a voice of excitement as his optics met the monitor. "We've got the first community we built out to the west of here. Then the one to the north. Now the base might just end up the center of downtown! One Earth year and it'll be a real town. Give it longer and it'll be a city! More of the refugees now are pushing for a public pole to officially name this place."

"Oh?" Arcee questioned toward the monitor. A name for the first city on a one day rebuilt Cybertron was not something she had ever taken time to even wonder about in the madness of rebuilding. The thought of it now though made her nearly grin her excitement. "And what are bots so far submitting for possible city names?"

"As soon as someone first mentioned a need for a name, bots started to get excited about a possible chance to help name it," Smokescreen explained. He started talking faster. A sure sign of his own enthusiasm. "There were quite a few suggested. Mostly bots just catch us outside and run one by us to throw into the pot so to speak. Or they send a communication. Two though have come up several times. Many would love to see it named New Iacon. Almost as many are suggesting we call it Pax. Both are pretty fitting tributes to the last of the Primes."

"When we all get back, we could set up a polling box somewhere. Let the refugees cast their votes on the new city name," Bumblebee said.

"Hey Knockout, welcome back," Bulkhead said next, addressing him over the monitor. "Sitting up well and everything now." His half of the divided team had received regular updates in text form about the situation and status of the newest Autobot. They knew full well the outcome had been decidedly terrible.

"Ooh, a new bot on base?" Knockout remarked as he studied the monitor across the room.

The other three inside the Earth base only gave puzzled looks for a second or two, all of them unsure exactly what Knockout was talking about. Arcee was the first of them to notice the partially hidden figure of another Cybertronian, light orange and silver in color, that seemed to be at work with a datapad and a computer console on the farthest edge of the main common room within the Cybertron base. The bot was sitting down, back to the monitor and at the very edge of it's range of focus.

"That's Speedbreaker," Wheeljack joined the conversation for the first time. He gestured toward the unfamiliar bot. "She's one of the refugees that came in on that last ship. She's been working with us drafting construction plans. Not to mention upgrading our systems. And submitting a few decent ideas for repurposing some of the machinery from inside an old energon refinery out south of here." He turned toward the small orange and shining silver frame that bent over her work in the corner. "Speedy, you gonna come over and say hi to the rest of the team or what?"

The small framed and clearly still very young bot slowly came to sit with the others in front of the monitor. Arcee in particular noticed the integrated features of a fellow two-wheeler vehicle mode at once. In her bot form, she displayed small delicate wheels, and a pair of very typical Autobot blue optics glowed a bit through a semitransparent face visor that would likely become her little windshield.

"Bot of all trades, master of none," Speedbreaker chuckled as she flipped the visor up on top of her head with one small chrome hand. "I do it all, but I pretty much want to be an engineer."

Arcee introduced herself quickly and then gestured around the room, from her place still seated on the bench with her foot up on top of the human's bookshelf she was using at a footrest. "Medical officer Ratchet. Though also a bot of all trades we might all say. Bumblebee is the bot by the control board." She gestured toward the red bot she sat with on the bench. "And that's Knockout, the other medic."

"Looks like he really is a former..." the little orange bot's words were cut off at once by Arcee, who held a hand up toward the monitor and gave a serious look.

"He's one of our team," she said without a second thought, and without even noticing the baffled look from Bumblebee at how fast she jumped to verbally defend Knockout."The past is past and the present is now, and that's what matters." She also failed to notice when not a second later 'Bee and their friends on Cybertron all exchanged strange looks. She did catch Ratchet in the middle of a light heated chuckle of laughter, and finally just shook her head and forced herself not to stare at the floor, embarrassed like some young-ling.

But Speedbreaker only shrugged slightly, giving a look of appearing to care less about judging based on affiliation. She only looked ahead at the monitor with a lighthearted laugh at the looks the bots were so obviously exchanging, and muttered a polite and understanding little, "fair enough."

"Arcee, we've only so far received a brief incident in shorthand form regarding a little exchange of weapons-fire and swapping of paint. Relieved to see, you look no worse for wear," Bulkhead said. His optics scanned his screen again, as he read more from the reports.

Arcee nodded, her face serious. "Yep. 'Cons are back. I did better than some of the troopers, and the rest just flew off. Me, I'm good. Just limping a bit and likely dodging Ratchet's wrench if I try to walk to much. But Starscream is still on the loose, he's now back here on Earth, and he's made it clear he's not playing nice."

"And just when has Starscream ever played nice in the whole span of this war?" Ratchet huffed. He sat himself down on a bench near the side wall, and turned so that he could look both at the monitor and the others in the room. "Nearly blowing Arcee's foot off with a blaster, while she had no weapon drawn at all in a fight, is just the kind of dirty, sneaky, and underhanded nonsense anybot can know well to expect from that buffoon!"

"It's also a strange thing to do," Bumblebee said, quietly, and more to himself than anyone else. His expression showed that he was thinking intently, reasoning.

"Nah, 'Bee," Arcee said, shaking her head. "Drawing a weapon in unarmed combat is not so strange at all for a dirty-fighting bot like that one. I knew better than to stop paying attention to his weapons."

But 'Bee shook his head slightly and explained. "It's not the pulling a blaster and shooting that I found so weird. You're right. That would just be a typical sneaky 'con move. It's the fact that he shot you specifically in the foot that I find strange."

"Go on, 'Bee." Arcee was interested now and considering his point.

"Let's all think about this for a second. Starscream may be a lot of things, but he is also a very well trained soldier and a commanding officer. He's been fighting and using his weapons for much longer than I've even lived. Of course I think we've always been clear that shot was not an accidental misfire from his blaster, or just a very bad shot. That would never happen at his level of experience with weapons. He hit where he was aiming. But why try to blow a bot's foot off, when you can just as easily shoot them through the spark, in the head, really anything more fatal than a foot."

"He obviously just wanted to damage her, instead of killin' her," Wheeljack said, from his place on the other side of the conversation. "Thank Primus for his decision not to kill her. But I see what you mean. That is weird and we know he's not above the brutal execution of an Autobot."

"The location of the attack is strange too," Arcee said, as she began to catch on. "Half a kilometer from a campground, full of humans on a weekend. None of the troopers or Starscream fired once on those humans, but there was an obvious and constant worry about exactly that."

"Starscream was clearly trying to send a message," Knockout contributed, finally joining in the conversation after listening to the others a while. "The Autobots' compassion for the human race will always be his greatest weapon against you… us… He didn't kill you, Arcee because he will have wanted make you run home to save the human race from further risk. He can then fight us on Cybertron."

"I hate the thought of giving into the demands of that creep," Arcee grumbled, scowling as she stared ahead at the monitor. "But clearly Starscream is strongly implying he will become a problem for innocent humans otherwise. We can't let that happen."

"You guys have got to come back here," Smokescreen said. He nodded his head and his optics took on a look of determination and. "He wants to fight us all on Cybertron, I say fine, let's let them fight the whole group of us together." The other bot's inside the Cybertron base gave their own nods of agreement.

"What about Knockout?" Bumblebee questioned. He looked to Ratchet for an answer, while his optics gestured slightly toward the still very disabled red bot.

"A fair point," Bulkhead muttered.

Ratchet thought for a moment. His gaze joined those of most of the team, who were all looking in Knockout's direction now. Finally he said slowly, considering out loud, "Well it's probably not ideal to be taking him through a space-bridge, with his processor still prone to random reboots with little warning. And obviously his body is still in bad shape. He can't even sit up under his own power fully unsupported. But there was a need to think of moving him home soon in any case. I'm giving my medical clearance to carry him through the bridge to Cybertron base."

"I say you guys get back here as soon as you can." That was Smokescreen. The Wreckers nodded and mumbled their agreement at once.

"I say we go back," Bumblebee said, nodding along with the others. He looked back at Knockout with a grin on his face-plate. "What do you say?"

"You're… asking me?" Knockout questioned. His confusion and disbelief was more than obvious, and that made Arcee laugh a little.

"Knockout. You're an Autobot too," Ratchet said, meeting his optics. "You get a vote, just the same as anyone else."

"I want to go home," the red bot answered after a second.

"Hey Ratchet, when you get back here, you mind taking a look at Speedy?" Bulkhead asked. The look on his face-plate showed that clearly he had just remembered something he'd nearly forgotten to ask. "She arrived with a bit of a bad knee."

The old medic nodded as he looked from one half of his team to the other. "I'll deal with it soon after we get back there. Autobots, let's pack up and get ready. Tonight we recharge back on our home world."

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

The trip through the space-bridge and back home to Cybertron, posed far more difficultly than such a thing typically would have. But with Knockout's badly disabled state, and now with Arcee still quite badly limping and slow, thanks to her still recovering foot, it was not exactly unavoidable. Except for Bulkhead, who hurried to offer Arcee a hand to a bench, the occupants of the Cybertron base remained where they were for the moment, staying out of the way. As soon as Ratchet and Bumblebee had gotten Knockout comfortably sitting up on a bench, much the same as had worked well in Earth base, many of the bots began to chatter at each other in the excitement of a reunited team.

"Knockout, you're looking so much better since the last time we saw you," Wheeljack commented. He approached the red bot, and gave him a friendly smack on his shoulder panel. "Good to have you back."

"Thanks for not dying on us," Smokescreen put in. He laughed a little, but his face-plate showed that he was at least partly serious too. "It was still looking pretty bad the day we left."

"Thank you," Knockout said in reply. For a long moment it looked like he was going to say more, but he didn't. Instead he only sat looking around the inside of the common room of the base, smiling slightly and clearly happy to be home.

"Energon dispenser is filled and ready, if anyone still needs to refuel," Bulkhead gestured toward the dispenser at the far side of the common room. Then he gave a chuckle and grinned at the group. "Also, new batch of high grade is ready and bottled for later. Wheeljack's been teaching Speedy how to refine it well."

The small orange and silver newcomer looked up from her place once again in front of the computer in the corner, and smiled at the group, but said nothing at all.

Knockout, sitting in his place, somewhat awkwardly on the bench, idly worked on practicing movement while he watched the others interact. He lifted his left arm from the armrest and lowered it again several times. Arcee had been conversing with Bulkhead about some new construction plans he had designed with Speedbreaker while she was away. But she stopped speaking right in the middle of her opinion on the height of an archway, as she noticed just how high Knockout could lift his arm. She commented on it out loud, unable to contain her excitement for his achievement, and naturally that got Ratchet's attention in under a second.

"Hmmm…." he said, leaving the seat he had taken near one of the consoles and crossing the room, to kneel on the floor in front of the red bot. "Knockout, do you mind doing that again, once more?"

He did so, and the old medic gave a look of obvious consideration. "That really is a great improvement. How well can that hand move?" He watched as Knockout slowly bent his fingers and turned his wrist joint slightly. There was so clearly still a great degree of difficulty to the motion. But the fingers bent and the wrist turned a bit, where neither had been even slightly possible before.

"The left hand was pretty much completely fragged then?" Wheeljack questioned. He'd gone back to his seat at the other side of the room, but turned in his seat a little as he spoke.

Any updates his half of the team had received abut Knockout's condition had been detailed enough, but still slightly vague of simplicity sake. 'left limbs and digits still limited in function', could have meant many things. They had all known he could speak just fine, and that he could reason and think perfectly well. They knew he had been bored, far more stubborn and openly defiant than usual. But they also knew he was quite badly physically damaged, whatever that might have meant exactly. It had been explained once that he entirely unpredictable emotionally, laying calmly, or even laughing at something one second, only to cry his optics out or scream in frustration over his helplessness. Another messages days later had explained that that situation was, by then, even worse.

Knockout gave a slight nod of his head, and for a fleeting second he wanted to growl in annoyance at the pitiful looks of the other bots. But he realized just as quickly that there were no such looks at all, and it was only his own fear of such a thing that made him believe he saw just that.

"I'd like to bring you back to the medbay for an updated assessment and scans after I've seen to Speedbreaker," Ratchet said. He narrowed his optics and gave a steady glare, as Knockout rolled his optics in dread of going back there.

"Just for a couple of hours at the most," the old medic huffed, still glaring in frustration. "I'm not going to keep you in the medbay. You can recharge in your own room later."

"I had begun to wonder when I might finally be freed from Ratchet's medmay of doom." Knockout remarked, with a grin on his face-plate at the thought of being back in his own living space again.

"Watch it," Ratchet said, in mock warning. "I still have a wench around here somewhere, and Primus help me, it's been a while since anybot has needed a good clunk over the head."

"Hmm," he said after a moment in which Knockout had only glared at him again, before lowering his optics to look down in defeat over so clearly far more than just the implied threat that would never be acted on. He spoke more compassionate to him. "Honestly, I do understand your frustration. It's one thing to spend your days in the medbay working with patients. Quite anther to end up a patient yourself."

"It's just been a long road," Knockout admitted. "Getting recently scrapped and busted up so badly before our trip back to Earth was one thing, and that was bad enough. Even then I remember being terrified and fearing I might off line. This is another thing entirely. I… I've never even seen a bot in a situation anything like this. Because any 'con would most certainly be left to die in a situation like this, surviving, recovering… it's all a complete unknown to me."

Arcee smiled up at him and wiggled on the bench so that she could sit closer to him, while still keeping her foot up.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

"So what's the trouble with that knee then?" Ratchet questioned. He pulled open a drawer in the medbay work table.

Speedbreaker, sitting on top of he repair table, with her legs dangling toward the floor gave a small shrug and shook her head a little, before she answered quietly. It feels fine to me. Bulkhead says he's sure he heard it squeaking and ever since he's been insisting I need it looked at." She shrugged again and gave a look that could only have been meant as an apology.

"Ummhmm," Ratchet muttered, as he gently bent the offending right knee back and forth a couple of times slowly. "Well it certainly is squeaking a little. Sounds like a tiny bit of rust in the joint. Normally I would expect to see this kind of thing in a much older bot. But then of course spending any long amount of time on a refugee ship, with limited exercise and probably not transforming much… That'll do a good number on a frame."

"Is it fixable?' The newcomer looked anxious, and Ratchet chuckled a little as he dug through the drawer, before he shut it hard, and yanked opened the next one down.

"A little oil on the joint. That should have you fixed up, squeak-free and on your feet in seconds." The old medic slammed the drawer just as hard as the first, and pulled open a third one. He promply went to digging through it, while he muttered to himself under his intakes. "A bot's gotta love Knockout's system of organization in here. Now, where in the name of all the rust on Cybertron is that blasted oil can?"

"So what's the deal with that former Decepticon?" Speedbreaker blurted, as she watched the old medic rummage around. "I'm not…. out of line for asking, I hope."

"Not out of line, no. But I don't exactly understand your question?"

Speedbreaker gave a look of confusion that betrayed her youthful and inexperienced ignorance. "Well, Knockout is actually… nice, social, polite..."

"Huh! You're too new to the base and the team. You might not say that if you knew him longer!"

"Growing up, far away from Cybertron, everyone I knew used to tell these absolute horror stories. 'Cons doing the most despicable, disgusting and horrible things, and doing these things all the time. My creator used to tell me those absolute horror stories until my carrier would finally tell him to shut his mouth before he scared me half to death. He was worried I'd never recharge again hearing such things. Bots used to talk about the torching of entire settlements while Autobot citizens burned, trapped in their homes. About how they would murder their own yonglings who were barely walking, simply for appearing 'too nice' or not getting mean early enough in life. There are stories of bots literally ripped apart, limbs torn off in battle, because some commander had a bad day and happened to to grab himself an Autobot. They say the 'cons are not even Cybertronains. That they were some kind of monsters without true sparks..."

"War does things to a society," Ratchet answered simply. His searching finally produced the missing oil can, and he carefully oiled the young bot's bad knee joint. He reached for a rag and wiped away the excess oil before it ran down her leg and made a mess of her and the floor. "It makes bots forget where the truth ends and the myth and exaggerated story telling begins. They are more like us than you would probably think. Most were just taught a very different version of the events that lead to the war in the first place, and made to believe it. Many were, or still are truly deplorable bots, doing truly despicable things. But many others had, and still have, potential. Somewhere a young refugee born to their side is likely siting somewhere now telling all the horror stories they've learned of Autobots."

"Bot of all trades then, huh?" the old medic asked, as he gently straitened and bent the little bot's knee a couple of times slowly, to test the joint, and she only nodded her understanding of what he had said.

"Do you think you could help me build something?' he asked as he put the oil away. "The design of it will need to be a bit specific. It'll need a motor. I'm thinking we can find more than enough salvageable spare parts inside that old energon refinery you mentioned on the comm earlier. Hmmm… I could build something like it by myself, but two of us could work faster. And the faster the better."

The newcomer laughed a little and grinned as she hopped down to the floor, careful of her knee. "I'd love to build this with you, Ratchet. If you want to come with me to that refinery and help me find pieces you have in mind, you can tell me on the way what it is we're building."

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Knockout had been quite happy with the idea of recharging back in his own room again. But to his dismay, once he was in there and left all alone, he found himself unable to recharge. He lay on his recharge station, with the light turned on, and looked around the empty, and still too bare little living space of his. He was aware that it was well into the middle of the night, and that frustrated him because though he was wide awake, he was certainly tired. With the light still on, he closed his optics yet again, for at lest the forth time that night, and choose to lay and think his idle thoughts in hopes that his processor would eventually stop its racing and slow down to rest.

A tapping sound caught his attention quickly and for a moment he assumed he was hearing things. His reasoning was quickly dismissed when he heard it again, and slightly louder. A light knock at his door, he understood, opening his optics again. He was confused by the knocking, and then scared by it, and finally confused again.

"Knockout," someone called from the corridor, on the other side of the closed door. He recognized Arcee's voice as she spoke quietly, clearly trying not to make too much noise and woke half the base. "You awake? You alright in there?"

When he called quietly back to her, she slid the door open and crept inside the room. Her optics were open wider than they should have been, and she was clearly near trembling as she stood in his doorway, just staring almost blankly at him in the dim light.

"Arcee?" he questioned, alarmed. Such a state was hardly one he was used to seeing her in. "What's wrong?"

"I… nothing's wrong… I… had a very bad dream," she admitted. Her embarrassment was more than clear.

" _You_ had a bad dream? Well that's new." Knockout was trying hard to make her giggle about it, hoping she might laugh the whole thing off, and that would make her feel better. But she only stared at him with her wide optics, and crept further into his room, looking every bit like he could only imagine a terrified youngling might look.

"It really was awful," she said, almost in a whispered tone. Entirely baffled and without any clue of what he could actually do, he lifted his right arm, silently inviting her to come closer.

"What did you dream?" he questioned, more than a little baffled now as she took up the edge of his recharge station, and lay almost trembling slightly against him with her arms over his chest-plate as she had learned to safely hold onto him.

"I really don't think you'd wanna know…"

But her gave her a look of seriousness and concern for her as she stare into his optics still looking scared, and she spoke again. "I dreamed I found you dead. Just laying face up on the ground on Cybertron somewhere, optics still open but no light left… body scrapped and broken. Energon spilling all over the ground… The spark chamber had been…. Completely ripped apart. And I just stood screaming, that somehow it was my fault. That I couldn't have protected you."

Arcee paused for a long moment after she had finished explaining, before she said "I… I had to get up after that. I knew I'd never get back into recharge until I knew you were really fine..."

"Of course I'm fine."

"I'm sorry for..."

Arcee," said Knockout, smiling at her. "What is it you tell me time and again about never being sorry for a nightmare?"

She nodded with her head now against him. He managed to move his right arm so that he could wrap it around her and slowly her slight trembling slowed and then stopped. For many long moments they both stayed like that, neither saying a thing at all and neither wanting to move. It was Arcee that eventually broke the comfortable silence first.

"I.. I should not be... in your recharge... station..." But saying so and doing a thing about it were two different things, and she didn't move to get up.

"Perhaps you should, or perhaps you shouldn't." Knockout only laughed, without making a single movement himself. "But since you obviously are, I just might not let you get out now." Arcee only giggled in youngling-like response.

"So what happens now?" she asked, speaking mostly into his armor again, before she lifted her head to look into his red optics.

"I should be asking you the very same question," Knockout answered. "I've thought a lot about this today. I suppose that may well explain the whole laying wide awake thing"

"Hmm?"

"Arcee, I may never be fully functional again. I'm thankful everyday now, that my mental functioning was never effected. But physically, it's anyone's guess now how much a can regain and how long it may take. Autobots, I've noticed are chronically plagued by a state of eternal optimism against any odds. I never could think quite that way. Remember, I'm still a medic too. I realize this is pretty much all up to random chance at this point."

Arcee pulled herself up to a sitting position on the recharge station, and just sat for several seconds smiling. Knockout couldn't sit himself up on his own, and anyway he was not in a position where he could have leaned against anything in order to stay upright. He was in fact still quite helpless in his own room by himself, but still it was far preferable to the medbay. At that moment though, he was happy to stay where he was, laying flat and looking up at her while she grinned at him.

"I'm not about to good old optimistic Autobot on you," she said. Her grin left her face-plate, and her expression was suddenly far more serious, to match his. "I won't say I know you'll walk again and soon, or that you'll ever even hold yourself up unsupported, or use your left limbs for much of anything. I can tell you how much a hope so, because I've learned over meany outnumbered and outgunned in and endless war, that sometimes hope is all we've got left, that's worth a thing. But then I think you know that all too well yourself already."

"You could do so much better in life than some fragile and broken bot..."

Arcee lay back down again and pressed her small body against his much larger frame. His left hand of course still lacked in most useful function, but as soon as she had reached over him to hold it in one of her, he at least tried to squeeze back even if slightly.

"I would fully agree with you, if I thought you were indeed broken," she said, turning her head to avoid mumbling against his body armor again, her body in a somewhat awkward, though not entirely uncomfortable position.

Knockout might have replied quickly. But he didn't immediately know exactly what he should say. A moment passed in silence, and he just smiled at her slightly, sleepily. Finally he opened his mouth to speak again, but closed it at once, when he realized the little bot still laying against him, slightly warming his plating, had obviously fallen into recharge. There was a flash of concern for a reaction that might await them both in the morning, when he knew Ratchet would knock the door and then come into to bring him back to the common room, so that he could sit up and be be part of the group. But he lacked the spark to wake Arcee back up again so that she could creep back out of his room and to her own, especially after she'd had that nightmare. He resolved to simply deal with whatever, if anything, may be said in a few more hours and dropped into recharge himself.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes/ Another one up. This one is a bit all over the place in terms of almost entirely unrelated events all in one chapter. But the alternative would have been to post several little tiny chapters and yeah, lets not. I only hope that this end up making sense, haha.**

 **I'm both happy and honestly surprised to hear that people actually liked the romance angle this took. There's more of it in here, but I'm still hoping this stays real instead of becoming silly and over the top.**

"So I musta bin in that junk yard for a good twenty earth minutes, thirty maybe, convinced… sure as could be, that I was talking to Bumblebee's vehicle mode," Wheeljack laughed loudly while relaying a story to his teammates in the common room. He nearly spilled a half full energon container all over the floor in the middle of doing so. "Well, of course, wouldn't ya all just know it. I'm carrying on about traffic laws and how that parking ticket slapped on my windshield was just a great big stick up the tailpipe. And Bumblebee rolls up beside me and transforms with this completely confused look on his face! No idea in the foggiest, why I'm standing around ranting like a lunatic to a fragging car!"

"Ha. I'll tell you, I sure laughed the whole way back to base," Bumblebee said, laughing himself. His expression changed in an instant however and in the very next second or less, he just looked simply confused. "What I never did figure out is why exactly you drove into that junkyard in the first place… or why you thought that old clunker you were yelling at looked anything like me."

"Ya sayin' 'Bee's car form looks like old old piece of junk," Bulkhead laughed. In his clumsy Bulkhead fashion, he managed to spill part of the contents of his container into his own feet. He ignored the mess he had made, or more likely he was simply oblivious to it entirely, and moved to sit down on one of the benches, saying "'Bee is certainly not a piece of junk."

From her place, sitting across the room with Knockout, Arcee shook her head at the nonsense and gave a tiny laugh over the whole matter. A few of the bots had decided earlier that evening, to open and partake in some of the high grade no one had wanted a few nights before, when they got back to Cybertron base. Arcee kept a wiry optic on her teammates, more than a little concerned after the mess that had happened the last time they got the bright idea to drink together. But there had not been any sign of such trouble now, and she had lightened up a little. She shook her head again, and then laughed out loud, when Bulkhead missed the bench he'd tried to sit in, and landed confused on the floor. He got up quickly, and just fine. Clearly his mishap was pure and simply Bulkhead clumsiness – he was hardly _that_ effected after a small amount for a bot his size.

"You wouldn't take me for a junker, if you saw even half the list of my engine and battle mods," 'Bee said, laughing loudly. Clearly there was something hilariously funny, at least in his own processor, about the idea of being mistaken for an old junk car.

"You sure you don't want any?" Bulkhead asked, once he was finally managed to get his wide framed and bulky body into the bunch.

Arcee shook her head firmly in response to that. It was the third time one of them had offered and the third time was had politely refused to partake, not at all in the mood that night for the effects of even a small amount of high grade energon. She was relieved when Knockout shook his head, declining as well. She had no idea what even a slight high grade buzz might do to him in his physical condition, but she could only imagine it couldn't possibly be any good. She finally voiced her concerns out loud, much to the dismay of the other bots in the room.

"Actually, a small amount would not likely hurt him," Ratchet said from behind the group. He'd walked into the common room from the hall leading away from the workshop, with Speedbreaker close beside him and carefully pushing a wheeled contraction that made the group of bots look at each other in baffled confusion.

"In my experience, so long as it's consumed only once in a while, and in small amounts, a little bit of high grade can actually be helpful to a recovering bot." Ratchet stepped away from the odd contraction, leaving it sitting in the middle of the common room, and went on, if for no other reason then Bumblebee, and certainly Knockout would probably find it most interesting. "I did some good research back in my academy days, on very small amounts of the stuff used in medical clinics."

"What's that wheeled contraption of yours?" Smokescreen asked after a moment and speaking up for the first time in a good while. Others mumbled their own curiosity about the very same thing.

"This," Ratchet said, nodding toward the odd looking thing with an expression indicating he was thoroughly pleased with himself about it, "is Knockout's new – and we are still hoping, temporary - mobility device."

The room full of bots, looked at the thing again, and this time, now with some point of reference, it made far more sense. A bot sized seat, complete with a harness system. Four little wheels underneath the base of the thing. At what was now clearly the front of the machine, mounted to the front of some kind of side bar that probably lifted up and down, was a flat little metal surface designed to carry one or more objects on there. On the far left side of that little shelf was some kind of hand control. The bots sat exchanging impressed mumbles, all except for Knockout, who sat open mouthed yet speechless as he understood for himself exactly how it might work.

"I can hardly take the credit for this," Ratchet said, grinning. "Speedbreaker did much of the building herself, after she worked out how a thing like this could be done. I only described what it was I had in mind, and she got busy." The old medic smacked the little orange and silver bot on her shoulder panel, and gave a look of far more approval than he tended to show with most new bots he'd met over the years. "Young one's got some talent if I may say."

"I… don't even know what to say..." Knockout, who had always been eloquent and well spoken, stumbled uncertainly over words.

"I remembered a few times back on Earth seeing humans rolling up the sidewalks on machines a bit like this," Ratchet explained, both tone and expression still indicating he was quite pleased with the machine. "I would imagine they didn't get around the best, and that way they could. If it works for a human on Earth, it should work just as well for a bot on Cybertron." He looked toward the red bot. "Ready to see if you can drive this?"

"Left hand is functional enough that it should be able to work this control. That will leave the right free to reach and grab things," Ratchet explained, after he had quickly and efficiently lifted Knockout off the bench and placed him onto the machine's seat, and as he positioned the bot's limbs so that he could power and steer the contraption. "Right foot on foot pedal to go. Left foot's going to go where it goes, as long as it's off the floor, and sitting on the machine. This runs on a rechargeable battery pack under the seat. When we put you on your recharge station at night, we'll plug it in and let it charge back up." The old medic fussed for a couple of minutes with the harness straps, which were entirely necessary because of Knockout's difficulty in fully holding himself up. He strapped one of them in behind him, using the wheels of his vehicle mode to hold him upright, and another in front so that it clipped firmly in over his chest-plate.

"Come for a walk with me," Arcee grinned at him.

"I want to go outside," Knockout said, after he'd spent several minutes giving wordless looks of thanks to Speedbreaker for her work, and as soon as Ratchet had finished double checking the safety of the straps.

"I suppose you would," the old medic said, understanding. Knockout had not seen the outdoors at all since his health disaster, and time since then had passed quickly before anyone had really noticed how long it had really been. "Alright. I'll give clearance to Arcee to take you outside. But please, don't wander too far. I mean it. Be careful, both of you."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Ratchet had spent several minutes down on his knees on the hard floor of the medbay, busily sanitizing the base of one of the repair tables. When he stood again, the slight creaking of both of his knees reminded him for a second that he was hardly so young anymore. A second later he brushed it off, ignoring it as he promptly began to spray down the table surface with sanitizer before scrubbing hard with a clean white rag.

He turned away from his work for a second and watched as Knockout rolled himself across the far side of the room to a rolling work table that still contained a set of surgical tools, that had been used earlier in a minor repair of a badly pinched and twisted wire in Smokescreen's arm. Ratchet watched as the red bot reached with his right arm to grab the tools one by one in his hand and place them onto the tray of his mobility cart, before he proceeded to roll back across the room to load the tools with his good hand into the little sanitizer machine mounted to the far wall.

"Don't worry about it Knockout," he said with a hint of a good natured laugh. "I was just about to do those in a second."

"I can do it," the red bot answered at once. But Ratchet saw the problem in seconds. The sanitizer was started by pressing a button on the wall, a fair ways above to the machine. The big blue button was not necessarily out of reach, even for a bot seated on the mobility cart. But seated on the cart, it was nearly above the height of his head. And while his right arm was certainly the far stronger and functional of the two, his reach was still far from perfect, when it came to reaching up. Sure enough, Ratchet saw him try once and then again, but not come within a foot of touching it with his fingertips. With the palm of his left hand on the steering control, Knockout made the cart turn as he glanced around the room. He rolled himself a short ways to a work station and picked up a rigid metal measuring stick that had been left laying out neatly, rolled back and promptly used it to hit the button on the wall.

"Got it," he said, grinning as he rolled away again. The measuring stick took up a place across his tray. It was joined a moment later by a couple of data pads containing patient records, which he promptly rolled over to put away inside a cabinet. Its sliding door was handy as he could simply slide it open and shut while reaching beside him, with his cart stopped sideways.

"I'm impressed with your level of function," Ratchet commented. He turned back to his work, scrubbing down the repair table. But a second later he had stopped again and turned to look back at Knockout, who had picked up another data pad and began to use it to mark off an inventory of medical supplies inside another of the cabinets within his seated reach. His writing, even just simple checks inside boxes, was considerably messy. But still the inventory made perfect sense.

"You don't need to be in a rush however to get yourself back into any work detail," the old medic went on after a moment of watching him continue to take inventory. "I'm still not eager to pull you off medical exemption status."

"I simply have to be doing something," Knockout responded in a tone somewhere between casual and almost complaining. Ratchet nodded slightly, understanding. He set down his sanitizing cloth and walked over to join the red bot in front of the cabinet.

"So really," he said, questioning, interested, "Honestly, how are you?"

"A bit vague of a question," Knockout observed without looking way from his task.

"I suppose so," Ratchet chucked a little. He reached for the red bot's arm, so that he would stop and look at him.

"Really, I'm fine most days," Knockout said. He let his left hand rest on top of the control switch, but took his foot away from the power pedal, and sat on his machine just looking up so that he could look the older bot in the optics. "Well maybe not fine exactly but… okay. Being able to move again, to get where I want, when I want to get there, even if I'll never actually do it again walking, is making all the difference. Sitting still day in and day out, watching life go on without me… the thought of that for much longer was honestly horrible.

"Speedbreaker will be glad to hear that."

"I wish I could express my thanks to the Autobot team. Not only for a way to move again by myself, but for so much more than that." Knockout sat for a moment with his mouth slightly open and looking exactly like he was going to say more. But he didn't. He didn't exactly need to, in any case. The old Autobot medic gave a look of unspoken understanding and a little nod.

"You've gotten very good on that machine," Ratchet said after a moment, giving another rare grin, realizing that Knockout had only had the machine for three Earth days, and was already riding around the base, and even outside, with the confidence to move at roughly a bot's typical walking speed. He had mastered perfect turns, starts and stops and could line the thing up to rest along side a work table within an hour of first trying to do so. "If I'm honest, I wasn't sure how well the thing would work, and certainly had no idea how well you'd be able to ride on it. I'd worried at first, you'd at the very least, be banging into the occasional door frame trying to get from room to room, and at worst, I was prepared to you to wedge the machine in against a wall in a place where reversing it would be difficult. But neither of those things happened even once."

"I was a finely tuned automobile. Precision handling is something I think I know a few things about." Knockout gave a slight laugh, but the sudden sadness that little laugh was so obviously trying to hide, was painfully clear.

"One more thing we have not ever tried to start to work with yet," Ratchet mused, without much clue of exactly how Knockout might take it. "Transformation, and motion of your vehicle mode."

"I'd have no control over anything on the left side of the vehicle," the red bot, was very well aware of course without ever having needed to be told that. "No functional left wheels, the back especially. So no moving. But it would be more than that. Left side doors might not open. Steering will be gone. Gears won't shift." He wiggled a little against the safety harness of the machine awkwardly, mostly attempting to get into a more comfortable position. He gave motion of dramatics with his right hand waving in the air, and laughed nervously. "Basically, I'm a beautiful junker…. At least as an automobile."

"Still, we can't say what the future will look like. How much function you will regain. Transforming is an action you still need to maintain. We need to start to put weight back on your wheels, and shocks. I can't honestly say I've worked out yet how to actually get you to safely go into vehicle mode yet. The fact that you can't hold yourself up is obviously a problem there. Hmm… I'll get back to you on that soon."

"Do you suppose that could be a workable goal?" Knockout questioned. "Trying to hold myself up, or even to pull myself to sitting on my own?"

"I think that could be possible with a fair bit of work at it," Ratchet answered with honesty. Knockout had tried that before, and it was plainly obvious that his frame lacked both the strength and the balance and stability for it. But he already much stronger now, and balance could be relearned. He had also began to show far greater determination to set his own goals and to meet them. He had been working so much harder now in twice daily rehabilitation sessions. "If you want to set that as your next goal to achieve, we will try to work on it a bit tonight."

Knockout nodded in firm commitment to it. Then he moved his hand slightly over the control of the mobility cart, just enough to roll it back slightly. He wiggled again against the harness straps, and looked the old medic in the optics. "There was… something else I wanted to talk with you about."

At that, Ratchet pulled a nearby chair closer and sat himself own in it. If they were going to continue on with any serious discussion, he wanted to at least sit at the red bot's level instead continuing to stand over him. He nodded to him to go on speaking.

"You care a great deal for every bot on this base," Knockout observed carefully. "But Arcee it seems, especially so…."

Ratchet blinked in surprise at the sudden, and seemingly out of nowhere, remark on that. But the fact that just that morning he'd discovered Arcee in Knockout's recharge station, curled up against the red bot, with their hands in each others, for the sixth morning in a row, told him the comment was not so out of nowhere at all. He decided to give both a bluntly honest answer and a serious look all at once. "If there was ever one young bot I took true pride in seeing come into their own, both as good Cybertronain, and as an Autobot soldier, it's Arcee. I never had my own younglings. That was all thanks to the war and not for lack of ever having wanted to. She would be about the closest thing being a daughter, who I would easily tear the spark from the chest plate of any bot to protect were it ever to come to it."

"I give you my word, I would never hurt her," Knockout said. His voice was far more serious then even before, and he looked the medic right in the optics.

"I believe you," Ratchet smiled, almost amused in a way, at the sudden nervous terror that was so clearly seeping through Knockout's otherwise serious and intent expression. He reached out to tap him gently on the side of the shoulder panel. He lowed his hand again to his lap and sat leaning forward in the chair, he was fast becoming thankful he had had the good sense to sit down on. "I think you really do love her."

"Yes, I do. I… I told her to give up on me and wait for someone functional to come along…."

"Well based on the last six mornings that I've come to move you – Arcee just looking up half asleep and with a look somewhere between 'love sick puppy' and 'I swear I'm innocent,' - I can hardly imagine she's even considering such a thing. And I don't think you really want her to give up on you either."

Knockout shook his head at once, confirming what the medic already knew all to well. He spoke up, as he tried again to get comfortable on the cart. Clearly he was trying to sit up straighter, and turn his body a little, away from an increasingly awkward position, where his body had been turned slightly toward the left. But his awkward and mostly ineffective movement had only made his positioning, and therefore his discomfort with it, far worse and much more awkward. "You've never said a thing about it. I've been meaning to thank you for that."

Ratchet huffed slightly, as he stood up from his chair. "Not my place to say a thing about it. I told you I'd not hesitate to scarp a bot or ten for the sake her of safety – though I do believe she might well scarp them herself and leave me only a bolts and wires. The very fact that you are still alive and well, and that I've never said a word about it to you until you spoke up yourself, should let you know I'd give my support to both of you."

"Thank you," Knockout said. The shocked surprise, and the utter relief in his voice were more than a little obvious.

The old medic, carefully undid the harness straps installed on the mobility cart and, pulled the red bot's weight against him, so that he could then lift him up slightly in the seat. Still supporting his weight, Ratchet reached down carefully to re-position Knockout's left leg so that his foot could rest comfortably at the front of the cart. He leaned him back again against the seat back, sitting him straighter and upright, before he quickly refastened the harness straps again.

"There. That looks far better for you," he said, and then quickly admonished him with, "You really need to learn to ask for some help, if you ever can't get out of an uncomfortable position like that."

"It truly doesn't offend you that Arcee's clearly determined to love a busted up former 'con?" The tone of Knockout's question was still disbelieving as Ratchet pulled the straps snug to hold him safely on the cart.

The old bot placed a hand on his shoulder panel, and shook his head firmly. "She doesn't see you that way at all. Not as busted or broken. Arcee has a good spark and all she will ever see if the bot she came to know you as. As for faction – like the rest of us now, she only sees a fellow Autobot."

"I… I want to ask her to be my sparkmate," Knockout blurted quickly. Clearly he said so, before he lost all nerve to say it at all.

"Well," Ratchet only gave a laugh and a grin. "If you don't hurry and do that soon, it seems to me a safe bet that she'll give up on waiting to be asked, and she'll end up asking you instead. Of course it's not important who asks who. But if you really wanted to be the one that asked first..."

"I would imagine it is still actually possible for me to bond with another bot..." Knockout said. It was part understanding, but also part question.

Ratchet chuckled a little at that, before he again looked serious. He also sat back down on his chair. "You know of course that I've never seen a case quite like yours. We're flying by the seats of our pants here, as our human friends might say. First I didn't expect you to live. Then I didn't expect you to come so far, once I had seen what state you had been left in after the malfunctions, and processor failures. I can say thought that the kind of… er… function, you hint at… should indeed function just fine. Might take a little thinking to get it right in your case, due to physical limitation, but..." he left his explanation at that, unfinished and easily assumed from there.

"Do you suppose we would be rushing things?"

"I do think this is very fast for both of you. But I'm not sure that's a bad thing actually. I've known many pairs that knew each other for a far short time than the two of you. More than a handful who met only once in meetings arranged by carriers and creators, in a long tradition of choosing suitable mates for their younglings who were barely adults yet. On the other hand, more than once, I've seen good pairs lose each other, or simply drift apart and go their separate ways, never to find anyone that made them quite so happy again, only because they waited and waited and doubted and questioned it."

"The custom you mentioned of arranged pairings," Knockout mused, reflecting, recalling. "That was once the common way of the city I came from. The practice was fading out by the time I came of age and left to live my own life. But still hardly unheard of… I knew many such pairs. Most of them were old bots by then…." He let his words die in the air and said no more.

"Well, my friend, I suppose we should discuss a practical matter." Ratchet sat straighter in his chair, but he didn't bother to get up all together. He took on his best take charge voice, though he generally as a rule detested the idea of taking charge of anything that was not entirely medical or related to such. "I've been planning to start the process of setting up and rearranging your room in a way what will be far more… accessible. A sliding shelf mounted to the immediate right of your recharge station would allow you to reach data pads or other things you may want, while laying down. Voice control set ups for the lights and your audio system, would mean you could turn both of those things on and off whenever you wish. Hmm… if I could connect the door to the set up too, it would mean you could lock your door if you ever wanted to as well. There are so many modifications I can think of for your wash station. I may just enlist Speedbreaker for that undertaking. Of course any time now it seems you and Arcee might just be discussing which of your rooms you are going to keep to use in the first place."

Knockout only sat on the cart nodding his agreement slowly. Both his face-plate and the general posture of his body, showed a great mix of his emotions as he took everything in. It was quite easy to guess that the idea of requiring modifications and adaptations to his living space was hard to think about, even if the idea of sharing that space made him happier about the whole thing.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Ratchet had been in recharge for a while, but hardly long enough, when his comm unit dragged him back to wakefulness. For a second or two he lay still, on his recharge station, closet to the far wall of his living space, and groaned at the interruption to the rest cycle he had so badly needed. It took only those second though for his processor to catch up to him even in his still drowsy state, and he was up and on his feet in another quick second.

The page sent from the comm, had come from the main unit located in the common room of the base. And he all but ran there, partly fearing a medical emergency of some kind or other involving one of his teammates, and partly baffled as to exactly what he might find. What he found when he rushed into the room, were most of the small Autobot team all gathered, crowding in tightly around the monitoring equipment in the far corner. Obviously no one was sick or injured and at that he let out a silent sigh of relief. But they were all talking at once, pointing at the monitor and clearly engaged in some debate over whatever it was they were actively tracking.

"We figured you'd want in on this one," Arcee said, turning to quickly address the medic. She stepped a little to the side, in order to let him squeeze in between herself and Smokescreen. She gestured toward the monitor. "We've been keeping a good optic on some unusual 'con activity for a while now."

"Unusual it is," Smokescreen added. He pointed at the rough map of Cybertron, that was up on the monitor. His hand waved lightly over the top section. "We assumed at first it was an impending attack on our base, when a considerable number of life signals were read as heading right toward us and fast. We were about to call an alert, prepare to defend the base for all it was worth and wake you with instructions to prepare for possible mass casualties in a worst case scenerio. But then we saw them whip right around and head right around and move away from us again."

"Some of them disappeared, out of range of our scanners and where they are now is anyone's guess," Arcee explained. "But others stayed in rage for awhile and we watched them like confused Earth pigeons without any obvious purpose, until they worked themselves into formation and took off to the North and left our range too."

"That doesn't sound like any attack or battle strategy I was ever aware of," said Knockout, sitting on his cart and trying to be helpful. He gave a baffled wave of a right hand.

"Thank you to whoever fetched Knockout," Ratchet said. He knew he'd personally put the damaged bot onto his recharge station earlier, and could easily imagine he would have anxiously waited for someone who could lift him, so that he could be moved again when the action had happened.

"No problem," Bulkhead shrugged, standing in his place at the edge of the group. "Moving him is not so scary as I thought when Arcee called me to help. I guess it's not like we're going to break him."

"No, you won't," Ratchet assured him with confidence. Knockout sat on the cart, rolling his optics in Bulk's direction.

"He told me how to strap him in there. All good?"

"All good, Bulk"

"I watched the recording of the footage twice," Knockout said back on task and clearly made uncomfortable by the implication of his own fragility. "The way several of them moved, and they way the rest scattered fast, it looked to me like a fight amongst themselves"

"'cons out to settle their differences above the sea of rust?" Arcee mused, thoughtful.

"Well it would hardly be the first time," Knockout said. His tone was almost regretful. "Autobots, I've discovered quickly, enjoy talking things over like civilized bots. 'Cons will just take their anger outside, and bash each others face-plates apart."

"Anyone we recognize?" Ratchet tapped a finger against the monitor map, over the one Decepticon marker that remained on the screen. The marker flashed and blinked out of sight, only to reappear again, still flashing. He knew well, that generally indicted a weak life signal, and realized at once that whichever of his enemies he was watching now, the bot was probably dying.

Knockout shook his head a little. "I double checked the signatures known in the record." He nodded toward a still activated data pad that sat on the tray of his cart. "It's not some common trooper. I know what their signatures look like, and that's not it. But this doesn't match any known officers either. The signature is scrambled all to slag, as well."

Bumblebee had been on monitor duty on that overnight shift, and he still occupied his place in a chair in front of the console, at the front of the now crowding group of his teammates. He kept an optic on the signature code that showed as a series of characters in the bottom right corner of the screen, and saw the charters suddenly shirt into a new set entirely before anyone else had noticed it. Every optic in the room stared at that changing signature as soon as he pointed it out.

"I've only ever known of one bot on either side that can generate a random fake signature like that..." Arcee said. Her face-plate looked grim. Knockout nodded, supporting her unspoken conclusion. On he monitor the signature shifted again.

"It's Soundwave," Ratchet stated. His tone was even, calm, serious. "And his life signal is clearly fading. He's not left his position."

Bumblebee tapped quickly on a series of control keys and called up a display on a smaller secondary monitor to his right. "Tracking signal. And…. zooming in a bit more… If this location is right and not another of his hacking tricks, something's very wrong. According to the placement of the life signal, he's on the ground, close to what would have to be an access road, and in the open."

"Like he fell from the sky..." Knockout mused, barely audible.

"Whatever happened, unless this is a trick, he's hurt and badly," Ratchet spoke up in a voice that clearly indicated he was not looking for a debate his course of action. "I can't just leave a bot, anybot, to go offline in the middle of nowhere, while he's still got a potential chance."

"It could still be a trap," Arcee said, concerned. She was not arguing with him. She knew well enough not to bother with even trying to convince him to override the medical instincts that drove him to save lives. She knew she would never convince him to let it go, even if she had truly wanted him to. Instead she was simply warning him to be aware.

Ratchet nodded at the point he had already considered well himself. "If this is a trap, well work that out when we get there. Everyone be ready just in case I need to call for backup. Bumblebee, you come with me. I might need help, from either a medical or a weapons standpoint."

"I'm going too," Arcee declared. Her own tone was just as final and closed to any debate as that of the medic. Ratchet and 'Bee nodded. Ratchet's hand already held tightly to his medical kit, and his optics trailed over the map again, committing a fix of the needed location to memory.

"Arcee," Knockout said, and she quickly stepped toward him. He held his right hand out toward her and she took it at once, smiling at him as she stood in front of his cart, facing him. "I would never tell you not to go out on this one. It's just what you do. But you be careful."

Arcee nodded, still smiling. "You take over for 'Bee on monitor duty. You'll be be able to reach the ground bridge control from a position in front of the console as well."

Knockout picked up the measuring stick, which he had taken to carrying on the tray of he cart, and by now quite regularly used as a reaching stick. He tapped on the ground bridge control with it, to indicate that he could reach perfectly well across his body with it, to easily a hit the bridge control to the left of him.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes/ So sorry for the very long wait on this one. Holidays and work will sadly do that. Thanks again for the reviews people left for this. I'm still thankful for them, because it lets me know I should go on writing this.**

 **Another warning for this chapter. I would consider it a bit graphic in parts. Descriptions of a pretty violent accident scene, and the like.**

Any concern the Autobots may have had about traps and trickery, could well be dismissed within seconds of stepping through the ground bridge. It was still before down, and the three bots stood for a second or two in the darkness of a wide open space little with rock and metal fragments, that reflected slightly under the beams of their lights. On the hand held tracker Arcee held in front of her, the one life signal they'd followed from the base still flashed and blinked. It was close, maybe a handful of paces away. And it was clearly fading faster now.

Arcee took another step forward, away from the place the bridge had been a second before. She pulled her foot back up in shock, before it hit the ground. In the beam of her light, she confirmed that she had indeed nearly stepped right on a Cybertronian hand. She shivered once involuntarily, before bending to retrieve the thing.

"Uh… Ratchet…?" she called over the darkness. Arcee held the hand up, and studied it for a second herself. It was slim, long fingered, nearly intact entirely. Clearly it had been snapped away from an arm, cleanly at the top of the wrist joint. Wires at the top of the shattered joint sparked weakly as connections died.

"Hold onto that, Arcee," Ratchet called back from several paces away from her. He turned so that he could use his lights to see what she had found. "Store it in your compartment for now. If anyone finds anymore limbs or parts keep them too. I'll need those."

Arcee could not help but cringe just a bit, at the casual and calm collected tone with which the old medic referred to the retrieval of body parts. She cringed again, and this time slightly more so, when she saw that beside her, Bumblebee had found the arm that the hand had been torn off of. The arm was torn from a body at about the shoulder joint, and it was broken and twisted, hanging bent backwards in his hand. The small yellow bot stored the thing in his own compartment without so much as a shiver, and reached out to take the hand as well.

"I need more light over here." Ratchet's urgent call from nearby made both of the younger bots turn quickly in the direction of his voice.

Ratchet was kneeling on the ground close to a battered bot, they barely recognized as Soundwave. The left arm was gone entirely, safely stored in Bumblebee's storage compartment. But every one of the three remaining limbs were battered and broken. Each one rested at horrible unnatural angles and bent in places that limbs were simply never intended to bend. His chest-plate was shattered into pieces. Most of it still sat attached the frame underneath, while the rest of it lay scattered around in black and purple metal shards of varying sizes. A pool of his spilled energon had spread over the ground, and it's faint blue glow illuminated the whole mess in a way that would easily make most bots shudder. A good amount of it was underneath the practically destroyed bot, but the rest had spread out almost evenly, leaving drops of it all around his fallen form. The bot lay face up on the ground, but still from that position it was clear that his wings, pressed against the ground and under his weight, were little more than a shattered mess of torn and twisted metal.

The old medic looked up for a second, shaking his head with uncertainty as Arcee sat beside him and held a bright emergency light she'd been carrying in her compartment. They all knew without any discussion at all, that it didn't look good. The damaged Decepticon was still alive. That much was obvious – his entire body shook almost violently, probably from severe shock to his systems. But there was little sign of life at all aside from that.

"Hey. Can you hear me?" Ratchet spoke to more than likely dying bot, in tone of calm urgency, and that showed just how little at that point, faction mattered. "If you can hear me, I need you to squeeze my fingertips just a little bit. I know that arm is broken, but you need to move your hand just a tiny bit."

When there was no response at all, and not even a slight attempt to follow his directions, Ratchet looked to his two teammates with another shake of his head. His face-plate bore a sad expression as he mumbled almost to himself, "It's still not clear if he's completely unresponsive, or just entirely uncooperative."

Arcee heard the sound of some strange metallic scrapping somewhere behind her, and she only tuned it out as she knelt on the smooth surface beneath her, holding the light as steady as she could with a hand that she forced to stay still. The scrapping kept up, behind her and a ways back. She wondered if she should give the strange and somehow terrible noise any concern. But her thoughts were far more passive then she knew on some level they should have been, and she went on ignoring it. She watched Ratchet and 'Bee, as they worked to wrap binding mesh over Soundwave's crushed and shattered chest-plate. Energon covered both of their hands by now, clearly neither was bothered abut it. If the damaged 'con was aware, at least a little, he was not exactly giving any resistance, even if he was not exactly co-operating either.

"He was shot down in flight," Bumblebee said. The poor young bot was holding up fine at first glance, and his hands held steady to the wrappings he was holding in place. But the look on his face, barely visible in the beam of Arcee's hand-held light, showed a bot ready to break at the reality of something that horrible.

Knockout's earlier comment about how it sounded as though the 'con had fallen right out of the sky, hit home as Arcee surveyed the pattern of the energon spread over the ground. Just the understanding that someone had done this to one of their own, to a commanding officer no-less, made her fuel tank flip, as she struggled to hold the light.

"Ratchet, will he survive?" Arcee questioned. She kept her voice quiet, worried for the slight chance that Soundwave could indeed hear and understand her question. She didn't want to point any fingers or jump to any conclusions, but she had already formed a fair guess as to who had done this. If he lived, she could only hope he would eventually confirm or deny her best guess.

The old medic mumbled his uncertainty without looking up. He had placed his fingertips against Soundwave's palm again and urgently repeated his direction to squeeze his fingers. This time the damaged bot's hand moved a little, and he so clearly tried to comply. The sound of metallic scraping was still as present as ever, and Arcee finally turned to look for the noise. She had clued in that it meant something.

"Laserbeak," Arcee mumbled her understanding, as she turned to find the source of the metal scrapping on metal sound, while still holding the light where Ratchet needed it.

The sudden realization, of a possible second patient made the old medic glance around carefully and quickly while he went on working. He couldn't take his hands away from the shattered chest-plate at that second, but he did quickly issue an order to Arcee. "Set the light down there so it shines in this direction. I need you to go and get her."

Soundwave's small bird symbiont had landed hard, some distance from her carrier. The small creature lay on the ground, flipped awkwardly so that two small feet struggled in the air, while one wing, visibly broken and half torn away from the little frame, shuddered against the metal of the ground helplessly, The remaining wing, not visibly damaged at all, made halfhearted and barely coordinated motions that may have been a confused attempt at flight without lift off. Her paint was scratched badly and a little stream of energon ran from a gash across the underside. But aside from that and the busted wing, the damages appeared minimal.

It stood to reason that the symbiont had been securely docked against Soundwave until she was ejected close to the ground, either in a deliberate hope for her safety or simply by chance. Whatever the case, it was the simple fact that she was not sill docked on impact with ground that meant she wasn't offline.

That tiny thing, when free flying and working with a high degree of independence, had all but taken out the entire Autobot communications network more than once. She'd been caught on more than a couple of occasions inside installations on both Cybertron and on Earth, flying away before there was a hope of taking her captive, and even then only after a usually successful intel grab. Laserbeak was armed with her own weapons systems, and well known for rapid firing of energy bursts. But a small bot generally meant small weapons, and hers had never been known for doing any great damage to a full sized bot. The worst known sneak attack on an Autobot base, had once resulted in a couple of bots knocked off their feet and a few minor injuries. But still it was known wise to consider her a proud Decepticon in her own right, and far from a simple mindless animal.

Under far more typical circumstances, Arcee may well have relished the perfect opportunity she had before her, to pound the tiniest of the 'cons into scrap metal. But the situation was different now. Instead she lifted the creature from the ground, and sat for a moment with the little thing beginning to tremble from the onset of her own system shock. Arcee held the shattered wing against the side of the small metal body, stabilizing it as well as she could, while a pair of tiny red optics looked at her wide with shock and terror. Arcee turned back to Ratchet and saw him still working urgently with a patient that was now starting to move a bit more. His slight, weak movements, looked if anything, like some pathetic and confused attempt to get up.

"How's it looking?" her question was simple and quick.

"It's not good." The old medic's reply was fast. To the point. "He might live. He might not. I need to get him back to the base as soon as I can get his condition stabilized for transport. I need to get him to a proper medbay if he's going have any chance at all."

Arcee gestured with her optics and a nod of her head toward the tiny symbiont she held steady in her hands. "Wing is busted. Bleeding energon a bit. But it looks like this one will live."

"Hand her to me." Ratchet extended his hands to carefully take the creature from his teammate. He mumbled, thinking aloud, "there's no way to dock her at this point. Not given the damage to the front of his body." After a second of appearing to debate it with himself, Ratchet gently set the little Decepticon, on top of Soundwave's body, just below the point of damage to his chest-plate. Immediately the little creature's wide optics narrowed a little and she let her head drop to rest, with her body flattering a little and her one useful wing no longer flapping.

"Ratchet," said Bumblebee, who now had the task of operating the portable scanner. He held it in his hand and looked nervous. The pitiful movement from the broken bot had stopped entirely. "Looks like he's just completely lost consciousness again."

The old medic reached quickly for the scanner. A second later, he said still calmly, "You're right. He's down for the count now. Still alive, just out."

Ratchet reached over half a second later, to place a now dirty hand on the young bot's shoulder, while the kid sat on the ground staring with a look of disbelieving shock at his own energon stained hands. "It's for the best actually, 'Bee. Trust me. We never want to be be faced with moving a conscious bot with so many shattered limbs and totaled flight gear, if we can help it."

"Are we… ready to transport?" The young bot was clearly getting shaky again, but he was still fine and sitting on the ground waiting for direction.

"Yeah. We've gotta go before he destabilizes again," Ratchet ws giving instructions in seconds, thinking his usual several steps ahead as he did so. "Arcee, call Knockout for a ground-bridge. And give him a heads up on this mess. I'm not sure he and Soundwave were ever friends exactly, but he'll know more than we do about this follow, and I might just need his insight."

"What do we do with Laserbeak?" Arcee questioned quickly, while she activated her commlink at the same time.

"I'm leaving her be for transport back. She's powered herself down right on top of her master. Works for me."

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Arcee and Knockout were on top of the recharge station that had clearly become collectively theirs at some recent point. Knockout lay flat, somewhat awkwardly holding a datapad of photofiles in his good hand and just managing to still flip pages with one fingertip. Arcee sat between the wall and the left side of his frame, holding the other of his arms in both of her hands. Gently, and working slowly, she bent and straightened it at the elbow joint a few times. She knew the joint and limb held far less tension when it bent easily, and she knew that far less tension was precisely what she was aiming for. Arcee moved on to the lower arm then, turning the wrist slowly, carefully. That was far less effort since Knockout could move it himself fairly well and he did most of the work himself as she simply helped him a bit.

She looked up for a moment and laughed with him over some of the photographs.

They'd both seen that same pad before, Arcee more than once. But she'd found some time that morning to reformat and add a pile of new pictures passed along by Miko at some point, toward the end of the meet up back on Earth.

Still chuckling over some silly picture of Bulkhead holding Agent Fowler's brand new car in the air in both hands, in order to inspect its undercarriage, Arcee gently turned Knockout's arm over then shifted so that she could let it rest on her folded knees. She inspected the seems of his body armor and checked the slightly visible wiring showing underneath. A visibly bent and badly twisted wire between the upper and lower arm caught her notice quickly and she very carefully snagged the wire between the tips of her finger and worked the kink it in free.

"You okay?" she asked calmly, when an expression of slight pain momentarily crossed his face-plate.

"Yeah. That feels much better now." Knockout smiled his assurance, telling her with only that expression, that she was fine to continue on, and he flipped to the next image, which she peeked up at for a second.

"My body is so fragged up tonight," Knockout said, frowning a little as he looked away from the datapad and up at her.

Arcee nodded sympathetic agreement, as she rubbed a hand with firm but still gentle pressure over the elbow joint, trying to relieve more of the tension on the joint and limb. The leg and foot had been in an even worse state.

Because the red bot's left limbs were so immobile, they were constantly prone of stiffness and badly kinked wiring. The nightly process of bending and unbending limbs, the straightening and loosening of wiring, and inspection of unseen but potentially serious damages, had been taken over by Arcee as soon as she had convinced Ratchet she had watched him do it for long enough and was confidant in taking on the task. Knockout had commented more than once, that her small hands were clearly better suited to the job in any case. Arcee had assumed just as often that he was taking every advantage of a well placed chance be mercilessly flirtatious with her through his comments.

"Should we keep that arm propped up on a pillow tonight?" she questioned, already reaching for one stored beside the recharge station for just such use. "Propping it up a bit should help with a bit of energon flow." When he nodded his agreement, she climbled off the recharge station so that she could get him positioned comfortablly. Then she finally walked around to climb onto the other side, so that she could lay close beside him and join him in looking at the photo files. She took the datapad from him, and held it for them, but he continued flipping through the pages.

"Oh, well I should have suspected Miko would manage to catch me on that camera phone of hers at least once" Knockout said laughing, when he flipped to the next image on the pad. They both stared for a long moment at an image of him somewhere inside Earth base. He was standing up, caught in a perfect moment, balancing his wight on his left leg, while the right steered him in a spin to the side. His energon staff sat perfectly, held in both of his outstretched hands as he practiced the motions of a blocking move. He had clearly been practicing one day in the training gym, when Miko had crept in unseen and snapped that picture.

"What are you thinking about?" Arcee asked quietly when Knockout fell silent, and his laughter died away. His optics moved in the direction of the old weapon, that now took up a place leaning against a shelving unit in the corner. Arcee had begun the process of slowiy moving her things into his room from hers days before, and sometime in the chaos of moving, the old energon weapon of his had been stored over there simply for lack of anywhere to put it.

He looked back at her again, shaking his head a little. He gave a slight smile that looked a little bit forced. But he stayed quiet.

"A bit sad to see pictures of yourself from before….?" Arcee started to question with sudden understanding.

Knockout nodded slightly, surprising her because she thought he would only deny it entirely. "Maybe a bit. Mostly it just seems strange actually. It just feels like it was so long ago that I was..."

"It's been about four Earth months since your malfunction," Arcee pointed out. "Funny that to you it feels like forever. To me it was so recent."

"You still think in Earth time," Knockout observed. He laughed a little again as he changed the subject completely.

Arcee nodded. "I suppose I do. I was there for so long, I guess I started thinking in Earth time one day and I never really stopped."

The two of them lay together on the recharge station for a while longer, flipping through the datapad, laughing, remembering the stories behind the photos in each of the files. Arcee held the pad, and for the most part she flipped the pages. But finally Knockout reached up with his functional hand, and for a while he tried flipping through the files. When they came to the past page, he went backwards, starting again at the first image in the pad, laughing with her over photos taken of his teammates, and their human partners, before he was even part of the team.

"Miko took most of these, correct?" Knockout asked. "She isn't in many of them."

"Mostly yes. Raf took a few of them I think."

"Ah. Well he must have taken this one."

Knockout stopped his page flipping, on the one known existing photo of Optimus Prime, sitting down somewhere inside Earth base, with Miko sitting in one of his hands and grinning. They had both seem that picture before. But Knockout had apparently not noticed it last time he was quickly pages through the pad while distracted by other things at the same time. Because he appeared to really take notice of it for the first time.

"She made him look so much bigger..." Knockout laughed. But his face was serious at the same time.

"The humans made us all look huge," Arcee replied. She had always before thought of humans as tiny and her own kind as typical in size. A sudden, new twist on that perspective made her laugh a little.

"What do you suppose Prime would think of us now?" Knockout asked. His expression was serious and his question entirely unexpected.

"I think..." Arcee considered a moment, choosing her words slowly and finding the truth in them as she did so. "I think… I know, he'd be glad that we got to be happy. I think you in particular would have made him proud."

"Me?" Knockout's surprise was real and genuine as he blinked at her in disbelief.

"Yes you," Arcee grinned as she set the datapad aside, on a little table beside the recharge station. "Knockout, do you not realize how far you've come? When you first come over to us, you barely said a word to anyone. And when you did, it was usually awkward as anything. You looked so scared all the time, and panicked over your paint so much more than you ever did as a 'con. I understand now that you probably just so desperately needed something real to hide behind. It was so hard for anyone to trust you. I guess that's a given. But it was so sadly obvious you trusted any of us far less even."

"I was pretty messed up back then," Knockout admitted. He let his gaze drop away from hers for second, but she held her own steady until he looked back at her again.

"You even have a human now, back on Earth, who counts you as a friend. That's a huge thing, considering..."

"I think you're right."

"Have you seen Soundwave yet?" Arcee questioned, resting her head against Knockout's chest panel, and looking up somewhat awkwardly, yet still comfortable, to continue looking him in the optics.

"I did," he answered. His expression turned even more serious. Almost sad. But he went on speaking calmly in any case. "I went to check in on him while you and Bulkhead were moving some of your things. He's in complete medically induced power down. I suppose he will be for days. And Ratchet has him restrained for safety. Although I doubt he'll be moving much anyway even if he were awake. His entire frame is just completely busted up. I… I've seen him of course in my own medbay while we served together on the warship. It would always just be simple routine things… A broken hand once, a couple of worn out joints, a bent wing tip… He was never one for conversation, but I'd fix him up. He'd let me work, and I'd release him back to his business. But for someone to manage to scrap him like that… Autobots never managed to take out Soundwave. To understand that one of his own faction finally did…"

Arcee cringed all over again, and she almost regretted for both their sakes that she had mentioned it at all. But she understood all the same that she needed to give him an opening in which to talk about it if he wanted to, and he clearly was not unwanting of the conversation himself.

"You say he was never one for conversation," she said, letting the talk drift in a slightly lighter, yet still important direction. "Can he talk much in the first place?" If he could and ever did, that was news to her.

But Knockout gave a single loud chuckle and answered casually, "of course he can." His optics turned thoughtful, and a moment later he explained. "He talks more than you would think, which granted is still not much. An actual conversation? I'm pretty sure most new arrivals to the ship had the brilliant idea at first that they might be the one to have a real conversation with him in the recreation room during time off duty. Primus knows, I once tired it myself. So did Breakdown. He'd only nod his head a little for a minute at most and then simply wander away to sit across the room by himself."

"Sounds both creepy, and a bit sad..."

"Very much. You know, at some point while repairing him, Ratchet took Soundwave's face shield off. Understandable obviously from a medical perspective. I'd have done the very same, especially if I thought it could be hiding further damage. He's leaving it off for now, just kinda tossed on top of a work table. I advised him to put it back on as soon as medically safe to. He agreed to do so."

After a moment he continued on. The look he gave her had turned to one of almost disbelief. "Soundwave a pit fighter once, in the arenas of Kaon. That of course is pretty common knowledge. But for a while there was talk flying around the Nemesis. Starscream may have been the first to start it, knowing him and his big mouth and love of blabbing about irrelevant and personal information. In any case, bots were talking one day about the idea that Soundwave's face-plate may have been almost completely melted by some opponent illegally fitted with some kind of heat gun. That may have been one of few fights he lost."

"Do… you think it's true?" Arcee questioned with dread, and already sadly certainly she could guess the answer.

Knockout considered a second and then said quietly, "Stories fly around, and they do tend to get bigger over the centuries. It is plainly obvious though that something certainly happened to him once and yeah, the damage is pretty bad. Granted such a think may well be fixable, at least to a good extent, and had he ever bothered to have me assess the situation…"

"The scene out there last night… It looked like someone shot him down, right out of the air…"

"Starscream," Knockout reasoned. He pulled Arcee closer against him with his good arm, and went on holding her as he continued. "Too early to point any fingers in definite accusation, but I would be well past shocked if it turned out to have been anyone else."

"I believe most of us agree with you on that." Arcee answered. "It was never any secret even to the Autobot side, just how much Starscream hates Soundwave. If Soundwave were to refuse to follow him as a new leader… You say he can talk when he wants to. Do you suppose he spoke up and gave him the business?"

"It's hard to say with him. With either one of them."

"Knockout, are you okay with all this? I know you two were probably not exactly friends. But still you served together on the Nemesis. You know him better than any of us ever will. And to see a him step away from going offline..."

"I'm fine," Knockout's sudden smile was just barely visible in the darkened room. His hand pressed against Arcee's back panel slightly in assurance of his words.

"Ratchet has been putting you closer to the wall, these last few nights" Arcee changed the subject with an observation. She grinned at him in the dark.

"He knows you need room on here too. Though sooner than later I only hope I can move over on my own."

"You will. I know right now you're kinda stuck where you're put, but you're getting stronger."

"I held myself up sitting today!"

Hearing that, Arcee smiled brighter. Then she almost frowned for a second and instead went on smiling at him. Most of the time, she helped Ratchet with Knockout's daily rehabilitation sessions. But that evening the session had been a shorter one than most because of Soundwave's high needs, and she had been busy with last of the arranging in the new living space. She felt sorry for having missed out on being part of his newest accomplishment.

"I can't come close to pulling myself up or anything like that," Knockout explained. He looked proud of himself nevertheless. "But to have been able to find my balance when pulled forward on a bench, and sit upright like that for almost a minute without needing harness straps, or leaning so badly against a wall… Ratchet thinks I can learn to sit up just fine. Someday I may not need the safety harness to drive the cart..."

"Your reach would improve too, if you could hold yourself up and learn forward on it."

"Very much so. Plus, just to be able to sit up on the recharge station… to pull myself up eventually, and to be more than just dead weight whenever I'm moved. If I can be honest Arcee, I'm getting used to the idea of never walking again, and never having a good left arm. It's hard yes, but I think I can learn to accept it. I just can't deal well with feeling like little more than just dead waight against…"

Arcee listened, waiting for him to continue, and letting him speak. But even after several seconds he said no more. His words died in the air, unfinished.

"I'm listening," she said, encouraging him. Understanding that he must have become sad again.

"Yellow," he mumbled suddenly out of nowhere. "I think the truck was yellow."

"What?" Arcee questioned in momentary confusion. She felt his arm loosen it's hold on her and then it slid off her back panel, to make a little thump against the recharge station. She sat herself up fast. "Knockout!"

"Mighta been blue..." Knockout said nonsensically. His optics were half closed and badly out of focus. "Now that'd make a pretty color for the radiator fan… oh come on. We're gonna be late..."

"Knockout," Arcee said again. Hearing his name, he stopped his senseless mumbling and his optics opened wider for a second, in which he stared at her in recognition.

"It's alright," she said, calmly as a sadly ever growing collection of past experiences came to mind, as well as Ratchet's instruction on the situation. She saw the sadly familiar instinctive panic he showed every time flash in his optics. "You're going into reboot. You're fine."

"I don't want to… Ar...cee… I don't want..." Knockout mumbled, barely coherent, and while he lost focus again.

"Shh. I'm here. I'm here." Arcee gently rubbed a hand against his shoulder panel, determined to keep him calm. She was sure that lately, each time she had personally seen one of his random reboots, the level of fear shown in his optics looked just a bit worse.

She was ready to offer more spoken reassurances, but Knockout had lost consciousness entirely before she could speak again. So she simply sat up on the recharge station, her hand resting lightly against his shoulder panel and watching cautiously, just as past experience had taught her. It took a couple of still and silent minutes, but his optics slowly blinked again before they opened in a look of confusion and then showed realization and finally displeasure.

"You okay?" Arcee questioned quietly. She payed close attention to his optics.

"Mmhmm." Knockout nodded slowly. He smiled his assurance to her, but he didn't look or sound so well.

"I should probably comm Ratchet."

"No no, don't." This time he spoke clearly and his optics looked back at hers. "He's got a critical patient to worry about. We don't need to bother him over this."

"Alright." Arcee only relented because she knew his point was a fair one, and he was quickly looking better. "But we are keeping a mental note of this."

Knockout nodded again. A second later he was reaching out with his right hand, motioning for her to lay back down herself, and obviously in need of recharge. Arcee understood that he was fine, albeit more than a bit upset emotionally. She lay back down beside him, and he moved to reach for her again.

He fall into sound recharge quickly. Obviously unable to have avoided it had he been trying. But Arcee remained wide awake, just holding him while he rested. It bothered her that after so long, Knockout was still randomly going into reboots. She might have succeeded in putting the worry over it out of her mind, if not for the fact that the problem was becoming more frequent instead of less so, as she would have assumed could be expected.

She knew that Knockout worried too. He had refused to mention even half of the incidents to Ratchet. But she knew that if the old medic was only aware of just how bad the problem was, he might just be more concerned than he was. Watching her soon to be mate recharging, Arcee made up her mind to speak with the old medic in the morning, no matter if Knockout resented her for it or not.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Soundwave woke up, to find himself laying in a medical bay that he didn't recognize. Confusion clouded his processor and he forced himself to think, reason, backtrack mentally **,** searching his processor, trying to remember. He was acutely aware of steady burning pain spreading across his wings, and out from the front of his chest-plate, and just as conscious of his limbs throbbing in terrible discomfort. Soundwave slowly tried to move, mindful that he was quite obviously injured, and determined to sit up in any case and look around. It was then he discovered he was unable to move. A flash of fear coursed through him then, and he forced it aside and tried to move again. Struggling harder he understood the resistance of heavy medical restraints cuffs that bound his lower arms and lower legs against whatever surface he was laying on.

There was brief flash of fear then, quickly pushed aside and replaced instead of anger, then seething rage. He caught himself after a moment, and calling upon centuries of self discipline, he reigned his emotions in quickly gave up his struggling. He was clearly injured and obviously badly. He knew a struggle could only make things worse. He thought back again, sorting through his processor, willing more memories back to him. He remembered waking up briefly, laying on the ground somewhere. He remembered voices and footsteps, and finally managing to see through his face shield. His vision had been badly blurred, and his head had felt like scraplets were gnawing at its contents. But he had finally caught a decent glimpse of the Autobot medic, and one more of the 'bots. The voices had told him there was at least one more somewhere unseen.

Soundwave understood that he had quite obviously been captured by the Autobots and dragged back to their base. He tugged once more at the restraints, and looked through his face shield at the Autobot symbol pointed on a wall above a cabinet across the room.

Movement across the room, and at the very edge of his field of vision, caught his attention, and he turned his head the small amount in order to see more. His optics barely caught sight of a familiar red painted bot, and Soundwave recognized his own very mixed emotions, all in a single moment. He recognized Knockout at once, of course. It was relief at first, at simply seeing a fellow Decepticon who might just intend to free him from his predicament. But the relief turned immediately to dread as he remembered that Knockout had defected. He wondered before if the red bot had truly been serious, or if he'd gone and lost his mind. Suddenly the question of Knockout's true loyalties mattered to him directly. Soundwave remembered with a sinking spark, that Knockout had more than once filled the role of interrogator for the 'cons. It had obviously been a strange role for a medic to fill. But he'd held a reputation for being very good at it.

"Well good morning, sleepy," the red painted defector said, still across the room. Soundwave would have recognized his voice, even had he not been the only other bot in the room. Knockout gave a slight laugh that sounded almost… friendly.

The red bot came fully into view, in another second he was beside the repair table Soundwave was restrained to. He was sitting on some odd wheeled machine, which was obviously motorized, and with a flat trey mounted to it to in front of it's right-hand side. On the tray were a long measuring stick, a single data pad and one balled up sanitizing rag. Soundwave blinked at the collection of items, confused and seeing no sense or logic to any of them. He blinked again when he noticed the straps and secure clips that held the red bot against the back of the machine's seat. He was strapped in tightly by over the shoulder harnesses and a belt over his lap.

"I think we better wait a while before you get your damage report," Knockout's red optics showed a strange amount of compassion, and perhaps even empathy. "It was… bad. Laserbeak fared far better." Knockout gestured with his optics and a slight wave of his right hand, toward a low cabinet, on top of which the little metal bird had fallen into recharge. "Quite a strange place to recharge I should think. But I suppose a good a place as any for him… her?"

When Soundwave struggled again against the restraints that held him, ignoring the shooting pains through his limbs that the hard struggling caused, Knockout rolled the wheeled contraption forward and closer. He reached out, bringing his right hand close to Soundwave's shoulder panel. But he didn't bring his hand quite close enough to actually touch him.

"Please don't do that," the red bot said. "You've been through many hours of major repairs and your body's systems are handling the rest, but your condition is still far from great. A couple of the Autobots will want to question you soon enough,". His expression was far more serious now. "It sounds like no one wants to keep you in the restraints once it can be established that you won't harm anyone here. Your status apparently is not that of a prisoner exactly, as it stands now. The Autobots want to offer you protection… I was asked by more than one, if I thought you may give willing co-operation. I said that I honestly have no idea…." He stopped speaking then, and gave a questioning look.

"Co-operation with Autobot enemies? Notion inconceivable," Soundwave said, He spoke slowly, thinking over every word carefully.

Soundwave had never said a word to the medic in the many years they had served together. But he saw no option now other than to communicate in words. Knockout's mouth dropped open, and then snapped shut again, and his optics bore a look of what could only have been complete and utter shock at hearing him speak.

"The Autobots are not your enemies anymore," he said, in a tone of calm seriousness. His hand stayed where it was, close to his shoulder panel, yet respectful of his dislike any physical contact beyond absolute necessity. His other hand, the left one, just rested still as awkwardly on the machine's control switch while the arm sat oddly still on the side of the machine's frame. Knockout went on speaking, perhaps unaware of being assessed by Soundwave's hidden optics. "You may well be in far more danger from your own side now than you ever would from any Autobot. We don't know if you remember anything or not. But you were shot straight out of the sky. The bots that bridged out to retrieve you had little trouble working that one out. It was a Decepticon, a member of your own team, that did that."

Behind his face shield, Soundwave lowered his optics. As he willed it and reflected, more of his memory came to him. He recalled flying, or trying to, as his engine stalled and sputtered. He recalled that he had been chased by a flyer coming fast behind him, and that he had dropped altitude rapidly, banking to the left and had still been unable to avoid the shot from the perusing alt mode's long range blaster. He remembered the spark sinking dread of understanding that the perusing flier was simply much better and faster than him in the air, and how that suddenly mattered to him greatly. The memories, once he had willed them forward, were not so easy to turn off again. He cringed and shuddered for a moment against the surface of the repair table he was held restrained to, as a vivid memory of the impact of a blast striking from behind, flashed across his processor.

He felt his own weakness as he trembled a moment longer against his will, and unable to stop himself. But for that moment he could recall the heat of the blast as it ripped through layers of his paint and then the frame beneath. He felt his engine stall and sputter like he was back in the moment, and he felt his still recovering body jolt a second as though trying to catch himself mid fall from the sky.

Soundwave reigned his emotions in as rapidly as he possibly could, and forced himself to stop his trembling. Behind the face shield he blinked his optics several times until he was entirely present back in the medbay and in the current moment. But although reigning himself in like that had taken only a moment, it was to him, a moment too long. By the time he had stopped blinking back the flashes of memory, and refocused his optics again, Knockout was staring at him with a strange look on his face-plate.

"I still remember terrible things too," the red bot said. He sounded as though he actually cared… understood… related. "If only you knew just how much of a mess I spent so many days in at first… How often I still wake up from recharge just..." Knockout's optics never broke from their compassionate and understanding focus. He was silent for a second before he finished his statement with, "I can only tell you to remember, you should never feel shame for remembering, reacting, feeling."

Soundwave looked again at Knockout's machine and his optics focused far more on the harnesses straps. For whatever reason he might have been sitting on such a contraption, the seemingly excessive straps somehow just looked wrong to him. It had already become clear that the bot's left arm and hand had little function. And it was perfectly logical to assume he was obviously incapable of walking, simply based of his use of the contraption he was sitting on. Looking over the machine's harness system again though, he realized with somewhat horrified disbelief that the bot could clearly not even fully hold himself up unsupported by the seat back behind him and securely strapped in like that.

"Knockout… Damage sustained?" Soundwave questioned. He had never been one for conversation. Never considered himself to be any good at it, nor did had he any desire at all to learn. He had long been more than content to go on for entire years or even a decade at a time without a single spoken word to anyone. He used spoken words so infrequently in fact, that use of his vocalizer functions, and the formation of a logically structured sentence, took a fair amount of conscious thought.

The red bot slowly nodded confirmation. For a moment he appeared to silently consider. More than likely, he was thinking about exactly to explain, and how much to say. "I nearly died not so long ago." His expression was serious, calm, and almost sad. "Processor failure caused by random rapid glitches. There was so much I lost. I'm maybe fifty-seven percent physically functional. I've realized recently just how thankful I am that it wasn't even worse, because I know it could have been. I may have lost any means of speaking. I could have been left with a mind near that of a small child..."

"Most reasonable course of action – leave you to die." Soundwave's tone was emotionless, direct and to the point.

Knockout should be dead. In Soundwave's mind, he should have simply been left to die somewhere for such a malfunction. He reasoned that the Autobot medic had saved him, and he wanted to reason that doing so had been wrong. In his mind, it was at best a drain on resources to care for a bot who would likely remain forever disabled like that. It was, at worst, he might have reasoned, simply not ethical to keep a bot alive when he could not even hold himself up. Had such a situation happened on board the warship, Soundwave would have been among the first to decide quickly that Knockout would only suffer and proclaim it best to let him die. But looking at him now, watching as he backed the machine up a little, his hand working the control efficiently despite the awkwardness of it, and watching him grin suddenly at his own thankfulness at living, he felt a hint of doubt over his almost instinctive and well programmed first impression.

"Reasonable for a Decepticon, yes." Knockout rolled the machine back and forth a bit, for probably no real reason at all. "Autobots just don't do things that way."

"Ratchet was without spark, to leave to continue in a broken body." Soundwave pressed his point, letting himself feel his frustration about it, if even the emotion remained perfectly hidden from the other bot. He knew he was arguing a point he had been taught to believe was valid and right. But all the while, even as he spoke the words out loud, he questioned it more and more.

"I think you're wrong," Knockout said. He answered quickly, not missing a beat, though he must have been shocked by the bluntness of the statement, and perhaps rightly so. He stopped his rolling of the cart back and forth and sat still, looking intently at Soundwave's face shield.

"I wanted to die at first," he said, speaking slowly. Clearly he was taking great care in choosing his words – a skill he had so obviously lacked on board the warship, where he had had a constant tendency of blurting out the first bit of nonsense that came to his mind. "I remember waking up one day to realize I could hardly move, left and right, up and down made no sense. Everything hurt so bad I wanted to scream, and I think I probably did at some point. I think I might have blocked part of the memory of that out. And that fragging old medic decided than was a great moment to see just how far I could reach up, which limbs might function, which might not, if fingers would bend, and feet could move. I work up sometime later and the old bot was on the same sort of track. This time he wanted me to keep my optics open, to focus see more than just flashing lights and blurry outlines of motion. To stay awake and hear about my condition and comprehend the reality of it all. All while I wished I could drift back off and never wake back up again. I understand by now of course that it was that early effort and determination that saved me, far more than just the attempts at repairs that most other medics would have said were impossible, or just not worth it."

Soundwave listened not just to Knockout's words, but to the tone is his voice. He paid close attention to the look in his optics. He saw it Knockout's expression, a kind of admiration for the old Autobot medic. He understood than that the younger bot, once known only for his arrogance and behavior that so often went beyond obnoxious, had found someone in his own field to look up to, to learn from, where he once so clearly thought he knew all there was to know about his own work. Soundwave knew also that he himself had a lot to think about.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes/ Just a quickly written short little chapter, I started last night and finished today since I've got a day off work. Kind of a weird mix of sad and just plain and pure fluffiness. Chapter 20… Wow. Not quite such how I managed to let this get this long.**

 **It was nice to see that people like the addition of Soundwave. I had never planned on adding him (or on several of the angles this ongoing story is taking,) but for someone reason I started reading a couple of fanfictions featuring Soundwave recently and was a bit inspired to think he'd be a pretty interesting character to (attempt to) write.**

"Knockout, could you help me out with a school project?" Miko questioned over the commline. She was quite obviously somewhere inside her home. Judging by the angles, she was sitting on the floor, with a laptop resting on her lap, looking into its web cam. Her closed closet doors and a stack of magazines were visible behind her. The computer was jostled hard as she shifted her weight somehow and the image on the monitor shook.

"What subject?" Knockout looked up at the wall mounted monitor on the far side of his living space, blinking his optics as the image shook again.

"Science," Miko grinned at her screen, and then appeared to consider a second. She mumbled an apology over the shaking, and quite obviously set the computer down on a flat surface somewhere, before she flew right into a fast spoken explanation. "This project is technically optional, although it is a big bonus grade, and I need that bonus big time. I told you once I'd gotten my best grade ever on a science thingy last term, right? So it just makes sense to try to beat that this time. I wouldn't bother with it, if I didn't need the grade. But I'm, already a year behind in school, I realize there is a future after high school… I may just have a shot at this if you can help me."

"Science is one of Ratchet's fields. If this project of yours is that important to you, then perhaps we should call the true expert in on this one." Knockout's reply had been well intentioned. But on her end of the comm-link Miko gave a look of wide eyed, near horror and dread at the idea.

"Oh no. No way!" The little human exclaimed, louder than one may have expected. "Ratchet may just be one of Cybertron's great assets in the field of science, but I brought home a big fat F the last and only time I let him help me with my science homework!"

"You can't be serious."

"As serious as an outbreak of bird flu in Tokyo airport."

"Bird flu?" Knockout gave a look of confusion in the direction of the monitor.

"It's an Earth thing. Something that could be very very bad news if humans caught and spread around the world. Nevermind..." Miko laughed and shifted so that she could shrug her shoulders at the monitor. "Let's just say the world, or at least old Mr Fletcher in Jasper Nevada, just wasn't ready for Ratchet's understanding of astronomy."

The bot laughed for a moment before his expression went serious, and he tipped his head slightly in thoughtful questioning. "You didn't call all the way to Cybertron, just so I might help you with some homework did you?"

"No," Miko admitted, grinning. "Although I really do need help. And Bulkhead might just be a worse choice than Ratchet. I wanted to find out for myself, how you are. Though I can now you're much better. Almost back to normal now. Last time I talked to you over the comm you still couldn't sit up quite like that."

Knockout smiled silently at the monitor for a brief second, but Miko''s face turned serious, thoughtful, and considering. "Hmm… I know I shouldn't have said it that way. 'Back to normal,' is wrong. You were always…." She looked away from the monitor a second and appeared to stare at the floor beneath her. Slowly she looked back up again and stared at her web cam. Her expression was suddenly sad. "Knockout. I'm sorry for..."

Knockout looked her in the eyes over countless light years, through their respective technology. He smiled at her. "Hey. I wasn't offended." He meant it.

"What I meant is..." Miko tried again, starting over. "You are more like you were before. Like any other bot..."

The human stopped dead in the middle of her explanation. Her hand flew to her mouth, as her suddenly wide eyes filled quickly with tears.

"I didn't mean… I said that so wrong," she said, chocking back her tears. "I didn't mean you're any different from anyone else."

"Miko," Knockout said, trying to hold her gaze over their monitors. "It's alright. I knew exactly what you meant to say. And yes you're right. I am much stronger now, and far more functional."

"Yeah. That's how I should have said it." Miko sniffled once, and as the threatening tears faded, she smiled instead. When the bot smiled back, the little human shifted her position again, so that she could get herself at eye level with the laptop, and she came closer to the webcam. From his vantage point, inside his living space on Cybertron, Knockout saw the flashes of motion behind her, as the human kicked her legs behind her, in her usual hyperactive sort of behavior.

"So that must be your living space then," she said, obviously studying as many details as she could make out of the now slightly too cluttered little room with the clear curiosity so typical of humans. Through the comm system's viewfinder, he knew she could likely make out an over full shelving unit, a bottom corner of the recharge station, and a pale green armchair in the far back corner that must have looked huge to her. There was a floor lamp, a closed cabinet door, the comm control box, a music player… "Pretty cool room."

"Well it's both mine and Arcee's now. She's been busy rearranging and decorating a bit. You're right though. It is a pretty cool room."

"I was talking to Bulkhead before I called you. He said something about congratulations being in order for you and Arcee. Cybertronians _do_ hook up and pair off then." Miko smirked and gave a tiny laugh. "I told the boys I thought it was reasonable to assume bots loved other bots, just like humans love other humans. The boys thought I was being dumb!"

"The desire to find love would seem to be universal among most sentient beings..."

"That's what I told Raf and Jack! They still said that was dumb." The little human sat still for a second, looking intently at the bot, over her monitor. "So, you are going to marry Arcee, then?"

"Hmm, well in a manner of speaking, yes."

Miko grinned again. "Cool. Hey tell her hello from me."

The human girl left her computer without any explanation at all, but Knockout could hear the sounds of shuffling objects in the room somewhere outside the range of her webcam. She reappeared again after a moment, and held up a photograph in front of her screen. Her own copy of one he had stumbled across recently in Arcee's datapad. She'd obviously made a print out of the image, and that made him uneasy. He could only guess that photo had come a from a pile of other printed images of Cybertronians. He saw her appear to almost bounce with excitement in her position sitting on her floor again

"Hey Knockout, I took this picture of you when we all met up last time in Nevada," she said still smiling her monitor. "Now I have one of every Autobot..."

The bot smiled again before his expression turned serious and he gave her a firm look. "Miko, pictures are fine of course. But be careful about leaving images of Cybertronians around in the open. Particularly those of us in our bot modes."

"No one's ever in my room. No one's even home much anymore except for me. My father works in Thailand, and my mother just sleeps here for eight hours a night. And anyway the pictures are in my sock drawer… From now on I'll keep them all in my locking box under the bed."

"That sounds perfectly reasonable."

"Hey Knockout…?"

"Yes?"

"Do you have that fighting stick of yours handy? The weapon you were practicing with when I managed to take that picture, I mean."

Knockout glanced over in the direction of the weapon she referred to, still haphazardly leaned against a shelving unit in the corner. He nodded absently at the monitor.

"Can you show me how it works?" The little human questioned. She was obviously nearly bouncing in her seated position again and grinning wider at him.

Immediately the bot understood the problem her request posed, and suddenly he found himself looking down and away from the monitor, becoming defeated.

"I don't think I could hold onto it, Miko. It's too long to deal with safely and a bit too heavy."

"What do you mean?" The human sounded suddenly anxious, confused.

"You thought I looked far more functional, and I definitely am, but still there's a very long way to go." Knockout looked at Miko's expression over the monitor. Saw it slowly turn to shock and then horrible realization as she considered his words. He had never known exactly that any of the others had told her about the outcome of his condition, but he would have easily assumed it was more than she obviously knew.

For a long moment he watcher her over the monitor, as her eyes grew wider and then blinked a couple of times. She tilted her head a little, obviously in thought. He knew she must have had questons and not known how to ask any of them. It was in an another instant filled with dread and realization that he looked up toward the viewfinder above his monitor and understood he was sitting too close and it was pointed slightly too high for his cart to be even remotely obvious.

"So you can't lift much weight, and it sounds like your balance is probably off," Miko said after a moment. She smiled again and give a look that was so clearly meant to be one of understanding assurance. "It could always be so much worse. At least you didn't lose the ability to walk, right."

Knockout saw the innocence of a human childhood in a pair of wide open and hop filled brown eyes in that second. And for at least a couple of moments he wondered exactly what he should do or say. He wondered why no one else had told her. He thought he understood every reason not to. His flared across his processor for a moment at being left to explain it all himself. And his spark sunk with dread as he saw how she was still staring him, waiting for him to agree with her, when she had quite innocently guessed so wrong.

"I'm still relearning to sit up unsupported." The bot had decided to be honest. But when the little humans eyes grew wider then before with the shock of understanding, he felt his own spark hurt just watching her reaction.

"But you look like you are..."

"Specialized equipment, Miko. I'm pretty efficient with it all my now." The room was too small and to filled with various objects, for the bot to be able to back himself up in any way that Miko could see the motorized cart on her monitor. And he couldn't even reach the viewfinder so that he could move it and show her. But he did back up a ways toward the recharge station so that she could at least make out and understand the tightly secured system of safety harnesses, or part of it.

"I stayed sitting up by myself for almost five minutes yesterday during daily rehabilitation," Knockout spoke of his accomplishment proudly, wanting so much to show her that he was alright. "And I'm close now to pulling myself up from a laying to sitting position, if I have something sturdy enough to grab hold of. That's honestly pretty good considering I can only really use one arm to pull up with."

"Can your left arm even move at all?" Miko questioned bluntly, shakily. The bot realized she must have thought little of noticing only the right before, as he gestured around the room.

"Only to some small extent. The same goes for the left hand. Left leg and foot fared far worse still."

The bot had spoken calmly and without showing anything to her but the positive tone, he had become so good at in the past months. He even smiled assurance in her direction over the viewfinder. He mentioned the school project again, assuring her that he would still help her. That he wanted to help her. And he tried calmly to ask if she might have had some idea of a project in mind.

Instead of providing an answer though, the tiny human burst into sudden tears as comprehension fully dawned on her, She stared at her monitor and webcam for a second, before her gaze dropped awkwardly. She quickly raised her eyes again and gave a forced through hard sniffled and chocked sobs.

"I… didn't know. Nobody told me… I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't know… It just looked… like you were… like you… were..." Miko couldn't finish whatever it was she'd been trying to say, before she began to cry so hard she could not even speak clearly.

"Miko. Bulkhead was supposed to explain all this to you," Knockout said. He could only admit to himself that he had no idea exactly what to do. He felt his frustration building right along with the hurt of understanding just how much it crushed his friend to learn the bad news in the way she had.

"Bulk's no good at that sort of thing." Miko went on sniffling, but her tears died out a little. "Knockout, I really am sorry for not..."

"What are you possibly determined to be so sorry for? You didn't do anything." Knockout smiled in assurance at the still crying little human.

"But I did." Miko stared up at the monitor with her eyes wide and still so tear filled. A stray tear fell and ran down her face. "I… I said… I said it could be worse… at… at least… at least you can still walk. I didn't know you can't!" She cried so hard again that her little body now shook with the force of her sobbing tears.

"Miko that wasn't your fault. I believe you would never say such a thing knowingly."

"I wouldn't. I wouldn't!"

"Well then, all good right?" Knockout grinned at the viewfinder, tying hard to make the human grin back again. But she only lowered her eyes instead, and he could see the way her shoulders still trembled from her crying.

"I say just say stupid stuff all the time," she mumbled, in a voice that sounded suddenly small, defeated. "My mother, my teachers, everyone… they all say I must be doing it on purpose. I just don't know how to act right. I talk before I think, and I'll never amount to anything."

"Don't listen to them," Knockout went on grinning, until finally the little human gave a little smile back. She raised a hand to wipe at her eyes with a clenched fist, and the bot went on speaking, while he gave a little laugh. "Your conversational skills and tactfulness are far beyond Soundwave's. Stay ahead of him in that regard and I'll never worry about you."

"Soundwave?" Miko raised an eyebrow, confused, curious.

"You probably didn't know he could talk, hey?"

"Isn't Soundwave long gone. Out of the way?"

Knockout had wondered since the call had started, what if anything he should tell the little human about the matter of Soundwave. He'd wondered if he should reveal anything at all. But the subject had just sort of come up on its own, and he saw that the little human certainly didn't look scared or panicked at the mention of his name, as he feared she well may have. Instead she looked into her webcam, sniffles nearly stopped now, and wiping her eyes once more with a look of curious expectation on her face.

"Soundwave turned up a few days ago," the bot said. He rolled the cart a bit closer to the viewfinder again, and spoke calmly, but serious all the same. "Crash landed over the sea of rust. The 'cons tried to kill him, and he's been under the protection of the Autobots since Ratchet and a rescue team brought him and Laserbeak back here, both damaged."

Surely most humans would be nervous at such news, and Knockout knew it. But Miko instead looked up with bright excited eyes, as she asked almost a little too innocently, "do you think he'll defect from the 'cons like you did? Maybe now he'll be part of the winning team too." Any remaining traces of her upset and tears, were gone entirely.

"I really don't know, Miko. No one knows yet. Soundwave was always loyal to the cause. He helped build the Decepticon ideal, as Megatron's first swore officer..."

"But he could defect… Everything is different now." The little human had always had such hope. The bot felt he had to give her credit for that. But still he only shook his head a little and frowned.

"I wouldn't count too much on that, Miko."

"Ya never know. He may be an Autobot someday, just like you might walk again."

"Miko..." Knockout began to say something more, while not exactly sure what he should say to be begin with. But his awkward and uncertain try at the right words was interrupted by the sound of a telephone ringing somewhere on her end of the call, and probably outside of the room she sat in. The bot was almost relived at the distraction when he saw her turn, and likely in the direction of her door.

"That would be my father," Miko said, her look so obviously conflicted, almost guilty. "The one parent I've got that still believes I wasn't some waste of time mistake. He said last week he'd call tonight at seven. I gotta go."

"Bye Miko," Knockout waved with his functional arm and hand as she killed her end of the commlink.

The red bot sat for several minutes alone in his shared living space, with to many thoughts to think about racing across his processor. Ideally he rolled the cart across the room to the shelf against which his now long unused old staff rested, propped at an angle so that it pointed mostly upward. With his right hand he reached out to grasp the pole, though he knew he could no longer lift it, let alone much else. Somewhere halfway down the length of the long staff, there was a far from obvious little switch which he had once designed as a switch to fire energon current across the deadly points at the top of the device. He thought for a second he might hit the switch, see it the thing still fired at all, since he'd last looked to find it already slightly malfunctioning, long before he'd fallen to his own failed processor. He decided that was potentially dangerous and moved his fingers away from the switch again.

"Knockout, is everything alright?" Arcee spoke up from behind him, somewhere near the door he had not ever heard slide open. He backed the cart up, so that he had room to turn it back around. And he did so with a smile across his face-plate.

"Just fine," he assured her, meaning it. "I was just… thinking..."

Arcee gave a single loud chuckle of laughter and stepped over to stand in front of him. "I thought I smelled smoke in here..." she kidded, backing up a step with her hands in front of her and a laughing, mock defensive pose.

Knockout tipped his head a tiny bit to the side, and mimicked over the top offense. "Ha. Funny… How was your duty shift?"

"Uneventful. Just how we like 'em."

"Miko said to say hello. She comm'ed me earlier."

Arcee's optics lit up at the mention of one of the children back on Earth. Her reaction was always the same. "How is she?"

"Arcee, Bulkhead never told her..."

"Oh no..." The small blue bot stepped closer again. A smile crossed her face-plate again and he put her arms around him for a moment. "She'll be fine. Miko is far more intelligent and thoughtful than I admit I once gave her credit for."

"Ratchet asked me to come and find you," Arcee continued, stepping back from him after a moment. "It sounds like he wants to do tonight's physiotherapy with you a little bit early, before he goes to run scans on Soundwave's frame. And seems like our… guest.. wants to speak to us. No clue what about, but it sounds like he's been doing some thinking."


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes/** **Another chapter I'm not exactly satisfied with.** **I edited and re-edited trying to get something I at least mostly liked and this ended up being my best – at least I don't hate it- version.** **Gotta love those times when ideas just don't translate into written words as well as they flow in your head.**

 **Someone asked in a review about the timeline of this overall story** **,** **asking it seems about the timing of this, in relation to 'Predicons Rising.' I hinted at that a tiny bit, but probably not in a way that was very obvious.** **To give a bit more of a clear timeline here** **(which I know I should have in the first place,) the building site** **collapse would have happened** **several** **months after the end of** **the movie. Then Knockout'** **s** **processor failure only a couple of months after that. The last couple chapters are four months later.** **T** **hat would be still** **only be about a year** **. So yeah, Miko would still be in high school.** **Hopefully that makes some sense to someone, lol.**

Soundwave had been locked up a cell within the Autobots' brig, which he knew from both his past recon work and his own current observations, was on the basement level of the base. He knew there were very likely four cells in total and then that all lined one wall toward a point where a passageway turned a corner. He knew that he was in the cell closest to the front of the row, with the lift a surprisingly short distance away, on the other side of the passage.

The tiny room he occupied was surprisingly not so tortuously uncomfortable as he may have imaged such place should be. A narrow bench hardly wide enough for his body, was the only surface provided to recharge on top of, but it had been fitted with a reasonably thick and heavy sleeping pad. Another wall, or part of it, contained a shelf mounted to the plain gray wall at around chest height, with heavy brackets, and on the shelf he had found a decent collection of various datapads of reading material. Across of the narrow bench, a set of think bars made allowed a view through them of the lift doors, of a usually empty hallway and a bare gray wall beyond the bars. A flat screen monitor was mounted in a corner, a ways from the wall, over the foot of the bench. And Laserbeak had clearly come to favor the top of the blank monitor for her perch.

Sitting on the edge of the narrow bench, Soundwave extended a hand, palm down. Laserbeak, who had been watching him from the monitor edge, with small crimson optics barely blinking, leapt lightly from her makeshift perch and flew the short distance to him at once. Wrapping her feet around the top of her master's wrist, gently, the bird flapped her wings a couple of times, and then sat with them both still extended, twitching and flicking restlessly. Trough the telepathic connection he held with her, Soundwave could all too clearly sense his symbiont's unease and discontent. Watching the flicking and fluttering motions she made only served to confirm exactly what he felt from her.

 _Laserbeak – your observations and situational analysis?_ Soundwave asked silently of the little creature, communicating only through their telepathic connection.

 _Our holding cell occupies the North-East corner of the Atuobot facility. Past recon p_ _laces_ _it beyond the inner wall of the blaster range_ _and training gym, usually empty or occupied by one to two Autobots._ _Directly above_ _us_ _is_ _typically unoccupied space used only for storage._ Laserbeak began explaining. The much smaller voice of her own mind was calm, though her wings continued to betray her state of unusual anxiety. _The storage room i_ _s_ _directly adjacent the office belonging to the medical officer. That small office contains one of the t_ _wo_ _master switches for the locking mechanisms to the brig doors._ _As far as I can gather either of the two will work alone, and that one is the simplest to reach._

 _P_ _urpose_ _of_ _that specific information…?_ Soundwave began to question, and was about to project his next line of silent words to her. But he stopped when he saw the little gray bird's optics cast toward the monitor from which she had flown down to him. He sent a small wave of silent amused laughter, when he noticed the air vent for the first time, half hidden and obscured by the monitor. _You mean to_ _fly into_ _the ventilation shaft._ _Reach the master switch..."_

 _I_ _could do it easily_ _, Boss. I've flown much further through those same shafts._ Indeed she had.

 _Escape undesired_

The bird turned her head to look with curiosity at her master, upon hearing his answer. She moved to flatten herself out against his arm, and let both of her wings drape over the sides of the black and purple body panel. Soundwave choose to elaborate simply. _Circumstances altered. New alliances perhaps not unwise. Escape will only destroy hope of such alliance._

 _Autobots as allies?_ Laserbeak's head lifted a little and two tiny red optics looked up, bewildered. _Decepticon_ s _do not ally with Autobots._

 _Circumstances altered,_ Soundwave repeated. And that was all he said before falling as silent in his own mind as he had remained in body.

Slightly tired, and more than slightly bored, yet calm and choosing to simply wait it out and see where circumstances led from there, Soundwave lay down flat on the bench and closed his optics behind the face shield. Laserbeak, who had remained laying on his arm as he moved, sat up and hopped off so that she could move to sit on top of his chest panel. Idly he lightly brushed one hand against her wing tips. Through their connection, he felt her anxiousness lessen slowly The small creature made a small audible chittering buzzing sound, to indicate her desire for continued affection. Inwardly, Soundwave laughed slightly again.

He did not intend to fall right into full recharge, but he knew he had done exactly that when the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside his small cell, woke him quickly. He sat himself up quickly, sitting up on the narrow bench without making a sound, even as the sudden pain in his still recovering limbs reminded him that fast movement was unwise. He was on edge as he turned to the watch the door slide open. Though he hid his nervousness just as well as he hid any sign of physical discomfort. Laserbeak perched herself in her earlier position, once again sitting on his lower arm, and turning her own gaze to the door.

Arcee walked stepped inside the small cell, followed immediately by the medical officer, Ratchet. Soundwave noted at once that the Autobots had been bold enough to leave the door wide open behind them. He resisted the urge to shake his head then, over the great nerve both had shown in their willingness to step inside a small space with him in the first place. He knew full well that one tiny framed officer, and old bot whose primary interest and function was devoted to medical duty over fighting skill, were hardly a match for him, even while still recovering as he was. But his desire was not to harm either of them, and he knew they must have correctly assumed that.

"So, sounds like you're ready to talk to us then." Arcee was clearly one for getting right to the point. She stayed in front of the door. Presumably she was prepared to shut it fast and lock it down in a second if she felt the action was called for. Soundwave was no visible weapons, but he knew very well that she, and for that mater the medic, tended to favor the use of integrated weapons, that usually stayed unseen until needed.

She stepped a little to the side long enough to allow the medic to walk in past her. He stepped closer to the bench and offered an energon container he had carried in with him. Soundwave took it gratefully and nodded silent thanks. But after holding it in his hands for a couple of moments, and doing nothing else with it, he bent to set it down, to his left on the floor. Both Autbots exchanged a glace and a shrug of shoulders.

"I must admit to being unsure, exactly how to go about offering fuel to Laserbeak," Ratchet said after he and his colleague had finished their bemused exchange of looks. "If it's as simple as offering a smaller supply in a miniature container I will happily do so momentarily."

Soundwave said nothing, but he did nod confirmation, as he inwardly gave a silent laugh. The simplest answers were so often, it seemed to him the correct ones, and the Autobot had stumbled upon one now, in a comment that was clearly meant to be only half serious. Soundwave nodded again, trying to get across his agreement without using words. He could both see and sense, that his small symbiont was in true need of fuel.

"I'll comm Knockout to bring that then." Ratchet clearly understood the need, and he seemed to take whole thing as a matter of course.

"You mean to call Knockout down here," Arcee questioned the medic out loud. Her tone showed a strange kind of doubt. "Floor down here is uneven. And can he use the lift?" Soundwave observed just how oddly concerned she sounded about such a thing.

But the older bot only laughed once in her direction, and gave a funny look. His only spoken answer was something about pushing lift buttons with a measuring stick, and a mumbled "floor's fine." Behind his face-shield, Soundwave gave an amused look that neither would ever see.

"Soundwave," Arcee said after a second. Her tone serious and focused again. She looked back in his direction, and made it more than a little obvious she was trying in vain to see his well hidden optics. "Obviously we've tried to take measures to make you comfortable down here. Still, keeping you in the brig is far from the ideal situation. Especially for too long, and considering your status here, is technically not prisoner status at all, but instead under protection. Ideally you'd be given proper, and likely far more comfortable guest living quarters, and the freedom to wander as you please, within certain areas within this base. I'd also like to see Laserbeak given the freedom to fly – within the same restrictions of course. I want to think I can trust you. I want the whole team to do the same. And ideally that will happen soon."

Soundwave nodded his silent understanding in one slow and deliberate tilt of his head. The little Autobot glared at him for a couple of seconds, before she took a step forward.

"It's generally much harder, as a rule, to trust a bot that refuses to speak a word," she said seriously.

"We know very well, you can talk perfectly fine," Ratchet said, adding his support for his teammate. His own glare was far harder and firmer then hers was. "A life of near silence was a choice. And while it is certainly a decidedly strange one at that, I'm sure you had your reasons. I doubt anyone here would dispute that. But surely you understand, we can't possible be the least bit of help to you, if we can barely communicate beyond a few nods and subtle hand gestures!"

Soundwave watched Laserbeak, as she hopped off his arm and flew back up to perch on the top of the monitor. Though the silent connection he shared with her, he felt her continued and increasing anxiety. She never did do well when strictly confined, for too long. He watched her staring at the paitr of Autobots for a moment before he turned back to observe them himself. Both were still standing calmly, and quiet, each appearing almost lost in thought.

"How would you feel about telling us how exactly you ended up little more than a pile of wreckage in the middle of nowhere in the dark of night?" Arcee spoke again, and once again, she got right to the point, without missing a single stop.

"We only managed to find you, by tracking a fading life signal," she said after another moment, n which Soundwave only chose of stare her down through his hidden optics, and stubbornly refuse to so much as make a sound. The tone of her voice though grew slightly lighter, and though she had never been anywhere close to loud to begin with, it dropped a little in volume. He so clearly saw her optics shift a little into a look close to one that could only be concern… compassion? "Before we found you, badly scrapped in technically neutral ground, we saw a signal that turned out to be yours clearly moving away from Decepticon territory, and with another flier coming up fast behind you." Soundwave chose still to only listen in stubborn silence as the Autobot continued. As she spoke thouhg, he coould not help observe the way both her face-plate, and that of the old medic took on expressions of true empathy, and consideration. "We realize how likely it is that you were fleeing from your own crew. And it's pretty fragging clear to us that you were shot right out of the sky by one of your own 'friends,' for your first ever try at running."

Still sitting on the bench, Soundwave felt his frame inwardly shudder and tremble again, as the memory of falling from the sky through the darkness of night, played across his processor once more and against his will. For a moment he was back in some still very recent past, aware of nothing but pain, tearing through his entire frame with such merciless intensity that he knew on some level he would be knocked instantly into unconsciousness the instant he even tried to move. He was caught up only a second later, in the memory of fighting hard to stay awake and aware only because he sensed that his symbiont was no longer docked safely in front of him, he could not sense her awareness anywhere, and he feared she may well be dead.

It took some conscious effort to force away the memories and to fully pull himself back to the present, but he felt like he quickly succeeded at it anyway. He focused his attention back on the pair of Autobots, relieved for a second, that they could not possibly have noticed his momentary lapse in control. A second later though a feeling of dread spread through him, when he realized his trembling had been outwardly obvious, and that he was still doing it, even if only slightly.

"Knockout mentioned earlier that he was clearly having some random reactions to sudden memory flashes," Soundwave watched Ratchet gesture vaguely toward him, as he spoke to Arcee. "He was a little bit concerned about him, because of it."

Acree nodded slowly and turned to look again at Soundwave. Calmly, still showing a strange compassion that had begun to make him almost uneasy in its unfamiliarity, she spoke to him again. "If only you would speak to us, we might just be able to work out exactly what we need to do to help..." She paused a second and then so obviously appeared to search out his hidden optics again before she said, "how abut this? We'll go a bit slower and take it one little question at a time. Can you tell us who it was that shot you down?"

Soundwave understood the well meaning in her tone and her approach. But all the same he felt his anger flash at that. A part of himself told him he shroud feel condescended, put down and insulted by her very offer to 'go slowly' with her question. But another part, a part that he had not sensed in so long he had all but forgotten who to feel it at all, told him he should feel relieved at being offered exactly what it was he needed at that moment.

"There would have to have been someone flying behind you, probably closing the distance quickly until they could aim and shoot," Arcee reasoned, still not unkindly. "Do you remember seeing who it was?"

 _Soundwave flew at a_ _height_ _h_ _e_ _knew was far beyond any his aircraft f_ _o_ _rm was meant to reach. His engines strained, pushed beyond a speed he had ever thought he could hope to achieve. And still it wasn't nearly enough._ _Behind_ _him,_ _he heard the cracking of the air all around, as the flier in pursuit broke the sound barrier in his own rapid and surely impossible steady acceleration._ _Somewhere, tucked inside of his vehicle mode, Soundwave felt his optics fill with coolant tears he so rarely felt a need to shed for anything._ _So rarely did he say a word, and he regretted with all of his spark that he had done so when he had. But the words had trembled from his processor in one second of lapsed judgment, one second in which control of himself had left him. And now he was about to die for the crime of speaking up, of disagreeing… The approaching flier grew closer. Engines roared, and the wind tore across his wing tips. One chance left. Soundwave rolled and dove for the ground, daring to drop attitude fast. His internals flipped somewhere inside of his form. He was not built for this! But still he had to try._

 _Laughter right behind him, laud and grating, as the flier behind dropped his own altitude with far more control than Soundwave could ever hope for._

 _"_ _Ha, Fall from the sky why don't you,_ _c_ _omm. officer._ _You'll only crash_ _trying moves like that. A_ _nd I won't! You should know by now I'm_ _good at this!" He was right of course. But Soundwave only flew on._ _He saw only his own end before him, but still he knew he had to try…_

 _The blast behind him hit hard. Warnings flashed, inner alarms wailed. He still heard the roar of engines, but through a sea of terror he knew they were not his he heard. His own were gone. That single blast from behind had taken both out at once. He was falling. Fast. Thumbing. Smoke everywhere! "Laserbeak… disengage. Now..." He couldn't hope to spare her while she fell with him, still firmly docked…_

Behind the face-shield Soundwave blinked forcefully, trying desperately to drive away the memory that tried just as hard to replay though his mind again. He tried all the while to sit upright, and unmoving, to hide everything he could from the pair of Autobots whose attention had obviously never left him. He intended to shake his head, implying his denial of having seen anything behind him at all. But just the thought of how he might answer the question, caused his mind to flash instantly back the to image of smoke behind him, and once again he felt himself falling.

He threw his arms up as if in some hopeless attempt to catch himself, before even realized he had done it. He heard his own intakes gasp and catch at little at the confusion between past and present, and before he could regain any control, the room began to spin around him.

Still fighting for control of himself, and at the same time struggling to force away the suddenly dizziness, he saw the Autobot medic step closer to him, one arm extended cautiously. He understood at once, his intention of grabbing him. Understood that such a move was hardly one of ill intent, but certainly practical given the fact that he may well fall. Yet all the same, the last thing Soundwave wanted in this, or most other circumstances, was for anyone at all to grab hold of him. The very idea of it now, made his state worse, brought him closer to complete loss of control over his own actions. Through his confusion, panic and the ever increasing lightness of his head, he feared on level that he would attack and harm the medic, and perhaps the officer too, all without truly wanting to and unable to stop himself. Still unwilling to speak a word, he only shook his head in slightly more frantic motion now. If the Autobot understood what exactly it was he was trying so hard to get across, he seemed still ready to ignore the demand to back up.

"Ratchet, step back a bit." Knockout spoke from somewhere just outside the still open door. "Trying to grab him without his agreement… not a good idea. Trust me on this one."

Soundwave saw the old Autobot back up a couple of steps and for a second he almost sighed in relief at that. But as soon as the thing he had seen as the most immediate threat and risk had been removed, his mind immediately fall right back to its replying flashes of bellowing smoke and falling through the air. The room started to spin again, faster this time, until the whole scene was nothing more than a whirling mess of colors and any sound was lost in a haze of almost incoherent noise.

"Decision – refusal to incriminate attacker," Soundwave spoke out loud, nearly shouting the words at the bots he knew could only have been staring at him with shock. He dropped from the bench and into an awkward sort of part kneeling and partly sitting position on the cold floor of the cell, so that he could brace his hands in front of him, as the dizziness retreated all to slowly. Without even a need to see him, he knew the Autobot was creeping nearer again, and once again Soundwave fought back an instinctive and born-of-terror need to violently attack him. "Request – refrain from physical contact. Soundwave - panicked… cornered."

Relief flooded his frame, and he dropped to the floor in a seated position, as the bot backed well away. When he saw the medic step out into the hall to talk in hushed tone with Knockout, his relief increased greatly, and the trembling of near panic slowly improved. Only the small officer remained inside the cell, and she was very close to the door, her attention apparently diverted mostly to the conversation behind her.

After a moment Arcee reached to retrieve a small container from the tray of Knockout's cart. Soundwave saw at once, as she offered it to him, that it was the promised small container of fuel for Laserbeak. He nodded his silent gratitude to her for it, as she held the little container out to him. When he didn't take it from her, but only nodded again, she instead set it down on top of the shelf, next to the stack of data pads. Soundwave slowly, carefully, pulled himself up to a standing position, still fighting just a little to recompose himself.

He watched her step back and turn to join into the hushed conversation for a moment or two. Eventually she turned around again, and said in a tone that was far from unkind, "perhaps we should leave you be for a while. Leave you to refuel, lay down to rest a bit. We can return to speak with you later tonight if you..."

"I am..." Soundwave not only spoke again, but also chose in that second to drop the voice modulator function integrated into his face-shield. "I am willing and able to continue on now, if it's all the same to you."

For a moment, Arcee, who of course was standing closest to him, gave a look that showed her clear and obvious momentary confusion over exactly who it was that had spoken to her. The two further back, just beyond the frame of the door, exchanged their own looks of bewilderment over it. An instant later, both the small officer and the medic were looking at Knockout with clear questioning written on their face-plates, while the red bot only looked just as surprised as anyone else. All three of the bots in the corridor and doorway began to converse again in hushed tones. After a few dragging moments of this, all three looked back in Soundwave's direction again.

"Soundwave, take a short walk with us." Arcee turned back to address him again. Her hand gestured toward the door, and to the corridor beyond.

Soundwave only nodded his compliance as he stepped toward her and the door slowly. Though he was unsure exactly how long he'd been in that small cell, he was well aware of having been hauled down there at some point, partly stumbling, and partly walking well enough, after that same bot had secured his wrists behind him in restraint cuffs. Slowly, with some hesitation, he moved to place both of his hands behind his back again, ready to turn around to be willingly secured again. He certainly did not like even the thought of it, in the least. But he did understand the perceived necessity of it. To his shock and surprise however, instead of pulling the set of cuffs out again, the Autobot only stepped out the open door and motioned for him to follow.

Laserbeak had perched at some point in those past few moments on top of the shelf near her tiny little fuel container, which she had barely touched. She now sat in front of the container, in her place on the edge of the narrow shelf, observing the every one of the bots, and clearly in no mood to eat.

"After you," Arcee said, with something close to a chuckle hidden behind a still serious tone, as she looked at the bird and gestured again to the door. Laserbeak held her place, unmoving and looking from each of the Autobots to her master and back again. The smallest of the Autobots eventually stared her down with a serious look about her, and Soundwave resisted an urge to laugh silently, when his small symbiont only decided to stare right back at her, so clearly testing her limits.

 _Laserbeak,_ Soundwave's telepathic command was nothing short of firm and unbending, despite his wish to laugh about it. _Come. And stop this at once._

 _You cannot think, boss th_ _a_ _t we should blindly follow the demands of this… Autobot!_

 _Come here. Now!_

Finallly, responding to the increasingly commands, Laserbeak flew at once to perch on Soundswave's extended arm. But thouhg the connect he shared with her, he could feel her fustration, the anxiety that had never fully left her, and now just how close she was to resentment of him for giving that demand of her without room for opinion. A rare feeling of guilt washed over him in seconds, and instantly he sent her the feeling of his own regret for his harshness.

 _Have you not always trusted that I would protect you?_ He questioned silently, calmly, a hidden smile over his face. _That I would try to do the best I can within any given set of circumstances._ He felt her own sense of calm agreement then as he watched her lower her head and let herself be carried, telepathically silent.

Soundwave was lead down the narrow corridor of the base's underground, lower level, with Ratchet in front of him, leading the way. He had expected at first that Arcee would step in behind, and perhaps even shove her hand lightly against the back of his frame, forcing him to move, though he was already doing so. But instead she walked beside him, arms at her sides and making a clear and obvious point of showing her intention of showing that she wanted to trust him to not overpower her and run. Though Soundwave thought it highly questionable in its level of common sense, Knockout, confined to a motorized cart and more than likely entirely unable to defend himself if a need were to arise, was the bot to fall in behind, probably for no other reason than his having paused to pull the door shut and struggled a moment to back up and turn the cart with nearly too little room.

It was only a short walk down the dimly lit corridor, and around a corner to the right, before Soundwave was shown into another room, still on the lower level. This one was far larger than the small cell he had occupied, and certainly far more comfortable, and even inviting. Several clearly old, but well matched and tastefully chosen light blue chairs sat nicely around a couple of square tables. A few more of the chairs sat in a casually arrangement near the far wall. There were digital prints of Cybertronain classical art on a couple of walls, and pale blue shades covered the handful of hanging lamps suspended from the ceiling.

Arcee made her way straight for the chairs set casually in the far corner and immediately she sat down, with Ratchet just as quickly doing the same. Both gestured politely for Soundwave to follow suit. And it was with some hesitation that he slowly moved to sit down himself. He extended his arm out a bit, letting his little symbiont know, through years of devoted training, that it was okay to hop off. She choose to fly one fast lap of the room, before returning to him and clearly wishing to dock herself onto his frame; something she had put up clear stubborn resistance to earlier inside the cell.

"This is much better than speaking in that cell," Arcee said. She smiled slightly. "We hope this way it will be less… panic inducing for you."

Soundwave gave a nod of his head, and though he knew no one could tell, with his face fully hidden, he smiled back a little. "Thank you. Room – nice."

"As you may be have guessed, this base is meant to accommodate around three times as many bots as we've got here at the moment. This is technically our recreation room. But we don't use it much. Mostly everyone prefers the main floor common room for whatever reason."

"Question – what is the intention of the Autobots regarding myself?" Soundwave dared to ask the question that had bothered him, since he'd first regained consciousness in the medbay. Anxiety rose up from his spark again as he waiting to hear the answer and he wondered what scared him worse; the idea of being returned to his own side of the war, or the idea of being kept indefinitely by the Autobots.

"Well," Arcee gave another almost-smile, of something clearly intended to be assurance, and leaned casually forward in her chair, with her hands on her knees. "You were brought here on the grounds of medical necessity, and under protection status. We are not about to hold you here against your will. To take away your freedom would mean you are now a prisoner of war, and that's not our intention."

Soundwave felt for a fleeting moment as though he should have been relieved at the outcome. But instead his speak began to pulse faster, and he felt almost sick at the words. He had been unsure only a moment before, of exactly which outcome he might have liked the least. But now he felt he knew.

"Outcome – handover back to Decepticon ranks?" As he asked the question, Soundwave regretted the choice he had made to deactivate the voice modulator. He felt like he could simply not keep the tones of fear and dread from his voice without the forced mechanical monotone, through its filter.

To his surprise, the small Autobot shook her head in response. She said in a serious tone, "That would also violate your freedom it seems. To give your right back to the bots that obviously want you dead… if we wanted that, why bother to save you to begin with."

Soundwave felt relief come over him at that answer. Then instantly he felt so strange and ridiculous for being relieved. He was lost. He was confused. He was far outside of his admittedly very limited comfort zone and he didn't like it in the slightest bit. He let his hidden optics wander away from the bot that had been talking with him, and toward the medic, who simply sat in his own chair leaning forward a little recording notes on a datapad. Knockout had rolled up to sit in a space between Arcee's chair and an empty one, and Soundwave watched him for a moment while he sat with his right hand pulling hard at one of the harness straps that had been fastened over the front of his body. Clearly he was trying to slightly loosen a too-tight harness strap, and Soundwave felt the anger he thought he had changed his mind about, returning again. He wondered once again if perhaps that bot should have simply died, to spare him a life strapped in like that.

He watched, baffled and fascinated, impressed and still angry all at once, as Arcee leaned over a little so that she could unclip the offending safety strap, pull and tug on it lightly a couple of times quickly and then carefully snap it back into position somewhere under hidden by the tray attached to the front of the cart. Knockout helped her to an extent, by holding into the harness and pulling it a little, with his clearly far more functional hand. Soundwave saw something in the way the two bots' fingertips brushed together as they fussed with the harness system. He brushed it off as silliness, as his disbelief at the state of his former colleague flashed again.

Arcee's voice, speaking again, dragged him away from his conflicted thoughts, and instantly Soundwave turned his attention back to her. "What happened?"

It was a vague question of course, but still it was easy to deduce exactly what it was that she wanted to know. Soundwave considered a moment. He made it a point to think carefully about his answer. Finally he spoke, deciding on complete honesty about it.

He lowered his head for a moment, and with far less of the formality to his speech than before he half said and half mumbled "I dropped everything in the middle of a duty shift and walked away."

"Why?" Ratchet spoke up for the first time since they had sat down. His simply question was not unkind, but clearly instead only an encouragement to keep on speaking. To explain far more.

"War has long been useless. I tire of the fighting. Decepticons – Lost our way long ago. Forgot what we started to fight for. The original cause – both dead, and no longer necessary or even relevant," Soundwave answered, forcing a return to his typical speech pattern of strict formality. "Starscream holds the ranks together only by constant threat of death to any that oppose his leadership… seeks power only for power's sake. I told him no more, and he promised I would die for my insubordination."

"We suspected Starscream was responsible for this," Arcee said after a moment in which she only stared in clear and obvious shock at his words. She extended a hand to him, but Soundwave only pulled his own in toward his body. "Help us end the war. It's so close to over now and should already have ended."

"Intention – not fully clear,"

"An opportunity to defect," the Autobot said. She continued to hold her hand out, though the gesture was unreturned. "Walk away from a cause you no longer believe in. Your desire is one wenow share; an end to this far past ridiculous and tragic war."

"Sharing your desire in that regard does not mean I wish to be an Autoot," Soundwave answered. He let his head drop at little so that he stared toward the floor, hiding rare feelings of utter misery in his own confusion. "So many ideals we do not, and never will, share or agree upon."

"Claim neutrality then." the serious suggestion was not said with any of the contempt he may once so recently have expected, and the Autobot had a look of calm understanding on her face. "No one would ever demand you declare your loyalty to Autobot cause. My only wish now is that you seriously take into consideration the idea that you don't need to call yourself a Decepticon either."

Soundwave considered everything he had heard. Everything discussed with anyone in the past days. Through their constant telephaic connection, he could sense Laserbeak's thoughts too. Even docked, she was constantly listening, paying attention, forming her own opinions about so many things, expressing such, far more than anyone might ever have assumed. He understood now that she was just as confused, just as lost as he was.

"You could have a place here, among our team," Arcee spoke again after a long moment. "A job, a living space that would not be much, but would be safe and comfortable. A part in the end of endless warfare, and a hand in the rebuilding of our world. Your status, as far as anyone here is concerned would be not unlike that of most of the returning refugees. The majority are naturals, who for various reasons fled the planet instead of joining either side of the war. Many sympathize far more with the Autobot side. A few do not. Still more don't have any real idea what the frag to believe or support."

"Observation – you place much trust in me." Soundwave drifted far of topic with his comment, but he so urgently needed to understand a thing that in his mind, made no sense at all.

"Is there some reason we shouldn't, at least within reason?" The Autobot medic spoke again, tilting his head a little in consideration as he did. "Your weapons are disabled. You must know that already. But I know even without them, and still recovering from major repairs, you could have overpowered any of us here more than once already. And you didn't. I was unable to deactivate whatever function it is of yours that powers your constant access to portable ground bridges. Frankly I have no idea what that is, let alone how to jam it. Yet you've never used that against any one either, though you've certainly had the chance."

"Motivation to harm you – nonexistent."

"And I think you made that perfectly clear from the time we hauled you back here."

"They're offering you a chance to start over," Knockout said, speaking up suddenly after uncharacteristically listening for so long without a word. "We've all made so many mistakes in our lives. So few of us ever get a chance to do something so differently before we go offline forever…."

Soundwave very slowly nodded his head in understanding. He still stuggled to keep from looking right back at the floor again in his own hidden fright at the whole situation. But slowly, and so quiet it was almost inaudible entirely, he answered, "Offer- tentatively accepted. Your reasoning – understood."


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes/ This is a bit of weird chapter. A bit sad. A bit hopeful. A bit… odd. A tiny bit scary in parts perhaps.**

 _Knockout screamed and screamed louder within his own head. In one second he was relieved that his vocalizer seemed only to produce the odd burst of weak static through all of that. And in the next second the idea that no one could hear him terrified him, and_ _only_ _made him scream_ _even louder_ _in his own head._ _He struggled to open his optics or at least to blink, and when the blackness left, it was replaced instead by_ _Cybertronian digital code, scrolling across his field of vision._ _Six separate and unique simple characters, appearing in so many nearly infinite combinations, moving upward in various and quickly shifting colors, against an eerily white background._

 _From somewhere far within the mess of symbols and color and further still from the light behind it, he could just barely get a sense of his own frame. His physical from. He still had one, that he could_ _feel_ _if he_ _struggled – and it seemed to be trembling, shaking hard against his will or control._ _He could hear the slight sound of metal body plating rattling against itself, over the sound of a steady beeping that he could make no sense of at all._

 _"Alright…. Alright… right… right..."_ _a voice was speaking from somewhere,_ _echoing badly and he listened over a vast distance within his own perspective, barely making a hint of sense out of the simp_ _le word._ __

 _The scrolling code slowed a bit and finally it settled on vivid dark green against the still white background. Somewhere far back in his mind, he understood that the white he saw in front of him, was the light given off by a light source somewhere and the slight reflection of every colored thing near him, filtered through his processor as a mess of brightness withing a dying visual center still trying its best to process images. He tried to blink again anyway, knowing he still would not see anything physical through his optics. The idea that soon the background beyond the scrolling characters would turn to blackness instead frightened him far worse and caused him to try for another loud scream. And that only produced a new little burst of static. His processor had severed its link to his vocialier, just slightly before it had his vision._

 _A slight warmth pressed against his frame and he was vaguely aware of some other bot holding on to him. Whoever it was, he was holding on to them too. It was only the sudden rough jolting of his body as his arms hit a surface beneath him, and the new static burst for a cry at the motion, that told him he had let go, unable to keep holding on._

 _"Not looking good… good.. good..." The voice spoke again and he felt the warmth move away from him._

 _No! No. Please don't let go of me just yet. I can't see anything. I don't know where I am anymore!_

 _"Happening too fast… too fast… prossess… shutting down.. down down… faster.. hoped for.. hoped for… for… for.. every vital function…. function… func..." the voice of whoever was speaking was unrecognizable, warped so horribly by a now failing set of audio receptors, that to hear bordered on terrifying. And he understood just enough of it through the echos, to know it was talking about him. Talking just like he was not there._

 _The code kept on scrolling._

 _I'm still here. I can't see you. I can barely hear you. But I'm still here… somewhere._

 _More scrolling code. Faster now. The green shifted into blue and then right into purple and to red._

 _"Going to… going to… to.. to.. power him down.."_

 _There was a second of relief at that. But so quickly behind it, the terror returned and worse than ever. Oh please hold onto me again. I'm so cold now. Confused… lost…_

"Knockout!" The urgent but still quiet gentle voice, and the feeling of someone's small hand lightly shaking his shoulder panel, dragged him slowly back from the memory that had invaded his recharge. "Hey come on. Wake up."

He looked around in relief at the inside of his shared living space, dimly lit by the usual light which shown under the door from the corridor beyond. Arcee was sitting up close to him on the recharge station, her hand still lightly shaking him.

"What time it is?" knockout mumbled, disoriented and still visibly trembling badly. The scrolling code and the horribly echoing and distorted voices played and played back again, even as he shook his head a little and blinked frantically, trying to force it all away.

"It's still the middle of the night," Arcee's quiet reply gave him something to pay attention to, aside from the unshakable memories. "But you were crying quite loudly for a while, and then started shaking pretty bad. It didn't look like you were waking up, so I knew I had better try..."

"Arcee, I'm..."

"Don't," she interrupted him. Her other hand joined the first in resting on his body armor, but of course she had stopped shaking him. "Don't even think of being sorry. Wanna talk to me?"

Knockout reached up to his face-plate, and felt the still wet and fresh streams of washer fluid that had obviously been pouring from his optics. He wished he could move to bury his face against the pillow his head rested on, or ever to run to the wash station where he could clean himself up and pretend it was fine. But he could not do so, and ever worse, he realized to his dismay that he was still almost violently trembling.

He shook his head a little at first, refusing to talk – terrified that in explaining what he had just experienced in his dreams, he might just recall even more of the memory he was only now conscious of for the first time. Arcee sat for a while on the recharge station just watching him and waiting to see if he might speak to her. When many long moments passed in silence, she lay back down again and wrapped her arms tightly around him, with her body pressed tightly against his. After insisting in barely audible mumbles, that he was fine, he shut his optics, and meant to fall right back into recharge. But as soon as the room disappeared from view, he was sure for a second he saw the scrolling lines of steadily color-shifting characters. And and that alone caused his intakes to gasp and hitch in panic, as an involuntary cry of terror escaped his vocalizer.

"You're clearly far from being fine," Arcee said slowly. From her position, still pressed against his frame and hugging him, she looked up with a pair of optics that never broke from his. "Hey. I don't know if I could ever truly understand everything that you must feel, remember and dream about. But I can listen to you."

Hesitantly, Knockout began to put into words the disjointed and horrific fragments of sudden memory that had triggered the shaking and terrible crying. After a moment of speaking, he began to talk a little faster, the whole thing making slightly more sense and his processor easily finding the words to describe a thing that had seemed so impossible to put into words at all. By the time he had finally finished explaining it all, after many long moments, his functional arm was wrapped around her tightly while he fought with some idea in the back of his mind that she might slip away from him, as he repeatedly fell vividly back into those minutes now long passed. A fresh stream of washer fluid fell from his optics and his body trembled much harder than before. But still he did feel better, even if not entirely all together at the moment.

Arcee only looked right at him, with her own tear filled gaze, and still not letting go of him.

"You were so close to being offline," she said. So obviously she was trying to hide the shock and horror in her own voice, but she was not succeeding at that. "No one thought you'd know a thing by the point you're describing..."

"….was nothing left to see but bright white. Visual process was breaking down..." Knockout mumbled, as his tears slowed a little, but he continued to helplessly tremble and shake. "… still heard your voices but… sounded so... distorted.. I'll never get back into recharge now."

But he slowly grew at least slightly calmer. With his arm still wrapped tightly around his soon to be mate, he was able to force his consciousness to understand he was still in the present moment, even as the horrifying scrolling of characters reappeared the second he shut his optics again.

"I've got an idea..." Arcee said. Her voice was still quiet and calm as ever.

"Music player on..." she said, speaking into the dead air of the room, without moving and thus forcing him to move. "Album file… six."

The voice activated controls for the music player, as well as several other things in the room, were of course special adaptations, installed mainly for the purpose of Knockout's freedom and Independence in there. But obviously anybot could work the set up, and she had found a practical use for it herself in that instance. Instrumental music began to play, at low volume, over the room's wall mounted speakers. The increasingly complex piece of music was obviously Cybertronian. Knockout recognized the difference between it any Earth music at once. But it was a song he had never heard before in any case.

"I listened to this so many times when I was little," Arcee said. She moved only a little, so that both of them could get comfortable again on the recharge station, but still she didn't let go of him, or make him let go of her. "My creator would make energon sweets for me and my sisters from time to time and we'd sit and each eat a few of our favorite ones. My carrier would play music over the speakers of the audio system in our main room, and he and my creator would inevitably just end up dancing together sooner or later. All of us had so many favorite songs, but my sisters and I would always ask to hear this one."

Knockout lay still on the recharge station listening to the complex upbeat tune over the speakers, and to Arcee as she went on speaking, slowly.

"Of course the war hadn't started yet. But there was tension in the streets constantly, as bots broke off into factions and made their differing opinions more and more obvious with their fists and guns. There was more and more talking about how one day the increasing amount of swapped paint between scarping bots would eventually lead to an all out war. Funny, those days seem so long ago and almost forgotten now. But I remember listing to that song so often. I remember how much my carrier and creator still loved each other more than anything after at least fourteen centuries together. How much I hoped to find love like that one day. And I remember laughing, grabbing the little bowl of energon sweets first, so that I could grab the copper and cerium flavored ones before by youngest sister could get them all."

She stopped speaking, but the music went on playing, at the same low volume, as both bots fell back into recharge, still holding each other tightly.

 _Knockout looked up with some confusion at Starscream, who was lounging almost comically in the captains chair at the front of the great hall on board the Nemesis._ _The red medic's attention was drawn only to the dim, and flickering lights, and to the horrible evil smirk on the face of the spoiled, loud and demanding bot who fancied himself a would be leade_ _r._ _At least a dozen troopers stood guard at various points around the huge room._

 _"_ _Knockout! How considerate of you to come back. To grace me with your presence._ _Normally I'd ask, of course – no, demand really – that you sped forward and speak to me on your knees until I tell you to get up. But I see in your case it's not exactly going to work. Humph. Never mind."_

 _The medic held his left palm_ _at the ready_ _over the controls of his cart,_ _prepared to roll forward, or to back up on a second's notice as he watched to see what might happen next._ _He dared not take his optics away from the other bot for a fraction of a second._

 _"_ _I should tear out your spark for your betrayal of the_ _Decepticon_ _cause!" Starscream declared. The pitch and tone_ _of_ _his voice were surprisingly even and low, and only the blazing light within his crimson optics hinted at his rage._ _He tapped the fingers of one hand against the arm of the chair, causing an irritating metallic clicking noise. "_ _I would certainly find some degree of joy in watching the light fade of your optics as you gasp for your final intakes in a living frame. A bot like you, Knockout… now I know you would certainly die screaming, crying, begging..."_

 _Starscream abruptly stopped ranting his disturbing fantasy of murder, and for a moment he just stared right at Knockout, with a scowl of disgust forming on his face-plate. The look soon became one of far too obvious revulsion, as he looked the medic over with narrowing optics._

 _"Of course on second thought why kill you. What's obviously become of you is a fate so much worse than death, and that somehow seems fitting for you. You're little more than a barely functional pile of scrap metal!"_

 _Something about the whole situation he had found himself in, made no sense at all. For several long moments, he only looked around the room taking notice of as much as he could see, from his position strapped onto the cart and without moving it to turn around. He could hear Starscream laughing as he did so, but there was no apparent danger at the moment._

 _"Wait," Knockout cried. He allowed himself a feeling of victory, as understanding dawned on him. And he proclaimed his understanding out loud to the bot that suddenly seemed almost powerless to him. "This is no flashback. This never happened! It's only a fragging nightmare and no dream can ever harm me!"_

 _But strarscream only growled at him, with optics still narrowed and blazing again with his rage. "Oh there are so many ways I can hurt you. Even in your dreams you will never escape the truth."_

 _"I… I don't understand..." Knockout stammered over his words in spite of himself. A thought crossed his mind briefly that he should simply will himself to wake from recharge, and free himself from this nonsense. But he did not wake up._

 _"You think you've got your life all together now," Starscream ranted on. He sat forward in his chair now, and glared down from its high platform, to where Knockout sat_ _o_ _n his cart, parked on the floor of the large dim room. The troopers each turned to stare as well, and though they said not a word out loud, he could hear the whispers of the laughter they shared among themselves. The new_ _Decepticon_ _leader went on_ _unrelenting. "_ _You're nothing but a broken, dysfunctional, pathetic mess._ _You think you're an Autobot_ _now_ _? Remember – they always did take anybot. Their acceptance of your defection means nothing really._ _You think that pretty little 'bot loves you?_ _Oh no no. Don't go on deluding yourself about that nonsense. Arcee is not stupid, Knockout. And neither are you. She knows you can't possibly live forever, in your fragile and busted up state._ _A_ _nd you know full well it's only pity that drives_ _giver her love to the bot no one else could want now."_

 _"_ _That's not true," Knockout cried. He returned the glare of his former commander, without any fear left in his spark, and wondered why it was he had ever once ever tried even tolerate him when serving on the same ship. He dared to shout loudly, over the whispered laughter of vehicons and the growling rage of the psychotic bot that still tried to glare him down. "_ _It's not. Nothing you say is true. There was a time I may have thought you were right._ _But I've learned I can matter to someone. Too teammates. To one that I believe really does love me, though I still do question why. To a little human..."_

 _"You would have killed that human with only a second's hesitation to save your own spark, had it been ordered of you! As for that little bot you still believe loves you as much as you say, do the right thing, Knockout for once. Give her up. Send her away. You can't fight for her. You can't even take her walking to watch the sunset. She may be the one bot I dislike most of all of those ridiculous Autobots you call friends, and perhaps I should have just shot her dead when I had a chance at it. Perhaps I still will someday. There will other chances… In any case, I will say one thing for that silly little bot. You are the last thing she..."_

 _"Don't you dare hurt Arcee," Knockout screamed in sudden rage, that gave him a new determination to hold his head up and stare forward with clear threat in his optics. "If you so much as lay a filthy hand on her, I promise you'll spend the rest of your miserable life..."_

 _"Knockout. Why exactly are you threatening a nightmare? You said yourself none of this is possibly real..."_

 _Starscream got up from his huge chair and slowly decided the dark staircase leading from the platform. All the while he laughed hard. When he reached Knockout and the cart he sat on top of, he gave the machine a hard kick to the lower back end. T_ _hat single kick upset the whole thing, sending it flipping forward. The safety harness was jerked loose by the force against it, and Knockout fell forward to the floor, as his machine tumbled sideways._

 _The medic was at first only relieved that the machine had at least not trapped him partly underneath it, which could well have been bad. But in a second he understood just how truly bad it was anyway, even without that added disaster. He had never spent much time at all laying forwards like that since his health disaster. If he was all but helpless laying on his back, laying like that, face down on the floor, was so much worse. He could not even imagine how he might try to move even the limbs that did work, in a way that might help him. He was all too aware of the coldness of the floor, pressed against his body, and the coolant tears that ran down his_ _face-plate_ _, as he tied so hard to fight them back._

 _"_ _See. All you do now, all you've done since you defected, and more so since your little 'incident' is cry. You think that Arcee wants a mate that cries because he can't get up?_ _Just how long do you think it might be before she gets tired_ _of_ _being your caregiver?_ _"_

 _"_ _You're not real," Knockout sa_ _id in reply to the harsh_ _words, affirming it out loud once more_ _as his processor began to react with panic and he felt his own mind began to believe in the illusion of his dream-state. "_ _Yours is the image my own mind chose as the voice of everything I fear the most..."_

 _"_ _You're right of course._ _You always were a smart on_ _e. You could have gone so far as a_ _Decepticon._ _Certainly further than you'll get among the Aoutbots… even if you hadn't had that little… er… malfunction. Of course they may or may not haven't still happened at all if you hadn't..."_

 _"You're psychotic!" Knockout said. He was now speaking mostly to the floor, because that was all he could do, but his tears stopped at once and instead he let his anger fuel him._

 _"Oh, well you would hardly be the first to say so." there was a light thud nearby as Star_ _s_ _crea_ _m_ _landed on the floor to kneel beside him. "_ _But that's hardly relevant right now, is it? You can yell all the insults you want, but that won't change a thing about you, your own pathetic brokenness or the fact that you would have perhaps been better off dying, as you have so little left to truly live for. And don't you give me that slag about how you may just walk again. May run, may transform and drive again, any of that._ _No_ _ne of_ _that will ever stop the flashbacks, the nightmares, the screaming_ _in_ _the middle of the night. I can't imagine any lover putting up with that for long, even if she is willing to put up with a mate that can't even sit_ _up_ _on his own, for Primus sake!"_

With an almost violent jerk, Knockout found himself laying on his back again, no longer on the cold floor of the nemesis, but comfortable on the recharge station in his room. The music player still payed softly on the shelf across the room and gave off a faint blue light, and music came through the wall mounted speakers. It had long changed tracks and now a piece of decidedly sad jazz music, originating on Earth was playing.

At some time in the night he had released his hold on Arcee, and his arm had fallen to the surface of the recharge station. But she remained pressed tight against him, with one arm thrown over his chest plate and the other warped around his right arm. She had placed her hand in his at some point, and it was still held there now.

For a moment he lay completely unmoving and simply watched her, still in her own recharge cycle. With some hesitation he let her hand go and moved his away a little. With that tiny motion, she moved away from him a little and flopped over to lay on her back, leaving some distance between them. For a second he saw her reach out toward him again, and he wanted to reach back. But he pulled his hand back instead and she seemed to settle back into light recharge, without ever finding it.

He knew a few seconds later though that she hadn't drifted right back into recharge at all after all, because her optics snapped open and she turned her head to look at him with a look of concern.

"You okay?" she questioned. Her little hand reached out again, and still he refused to reach back.

"Um hmm," he mumbled simply, and said nothing more.

"Music player off," he said a moment later, speaking into the empty air. The selection of jazz music that had come up on random play, was sounding far sadder than before. He suddenly felt first ridiculous and then utterly helpless speaking to a machine to control it without moving. He fought back a strange urge to throw something, and wondered if he should almost be glad that he probably couldn't if he tried.

"Ha. I guess we both dozed off with that still playing away," Arcee said. She gave a little laugh. "Doesn't bother me any. Scarp. If I can sleep with Bulkhead's fraggin' heavy metal tracks from Miko, blasting away down the hall, what's a little quiet jazz music."

"Hmm..." was Knockout's only reply.

"It's still early morning. Looks like we've got a while before someone comes in to put you onto

your machine and we start duty shifts. It's kind of nice being up early like this one in a while... to be able to just stay with you on here like this..." Arcee rambled on happily, but still sleepy, as she turned to wrap both of her arms around him again.

"Please. Don't." He almost snapped at her in his need for her to just move back away from him again. Instantly the guilt of that flooded his processor and he fought back a strange need to cry in remorse for it. Turning his head slowly to look at her, he saw that she was so clearly taken aback by the whole thing. He watched her sit up slowing on the recharge station. But instead of getting up entirely, she only pulled her knees up to her chest and sat calmly, just looking down at him with a hand extended, clearly inviting him to take it. He didn't.

"More flashbacks in recharge?" she questioned. She still spoke so kindly to him, even after he had snapped at her. That only served to make his need to cry even worse. He hated the idea of doing so, even more than he usually hated it.

"No," he almost snapped again. It wasn't quite a lie. The slightly angry edge in his voice served, he hoped, to hide any threatening tears.

"Knockout," Arcee said. Her blue optics locked onto his red ones, and even when he gave an uncharacteristic glare of annoyance at her, she held her gaze, and even smiled at little. "Look. I don't know what you might have dreamed after we went back into recharge in the night. What you might have thought about, and worried about. Or what kind of strange idea you must have had in your head when you woke up this morning on the wrong side of the bed, as they might say back on Earth. But whatever it is, please talk to me. I'm not going to give up on you."

"You always did refuse to give up," Knockout mumbled. He looked from her to the ceiling and back to her again, before trying hard to lower his optics and stare at the wall across the room, as the tears he'd been forcing back behind a wall of his own anger fell against his will. "Maybe you should, Arcee. Maybe you should just give up on me and find someone better. Someone functional. Normal. Strong. Capable."

"Please, don't say that..."

"The war is so close to over now." Knockout went on. His tears fell without any hope of stopping them now and he had given up on trying to. "You could have any life you want one day. Why throw away your dreams, your second chance at a future, all for some busted pile of junk like me. I can't be like anyone else again. I know that. Everything I might have wanted is probably gone now. But I love you more than anyone, and I can't just let you throw away everything you ever wanted too."

Arcee was nothing if not persistent. And instead of getting up then, or at least staying where she was and falling silent, she manged to move both of them slowly and carefully so that she was somehow wedged comfortably under his upper body, and sitting up with his head resting in her lap. Form her new position she reached down and moved his left arm back into the proper resting position she had knocked it away from while moving him. Appearing to consider for a second she then lifted it again, so she could grab his hand instead, still without letting his position become an uncomfortable one. Somehow, her concern for him, her thoughtful consideration of the placement of his limbs, only made him cry harder.

"You know what?" she asked, calmly.

He only shook his head helplessly through the flow and tears and almost chocking sobs. As much as he had wanted, or thought he had wanted, her to go away and leave him alone only second before, he now clung to her hand with his barely functional one the best he could.

"From about about the second week after your processor failure, you've been smiling and calm and insisting that you're good with accepting it all so perfectly. Sure there was a little frustration at first. Probably more than a few good screams of rage, or panic, or just that old look that said you're done, you've had it, and just give you an hour or fifteen. But too quickly I think you just forced all that to go away, put on this brilliant smile and convinced everyone, including yourself that you were okay with exactly what fate gave you. You might have almost had a team of bots convinced, and if I know you as well as I think I do by now, I would think you put on a wonderful show of perfect bravery and smiles the other day for little Miko on the comm. But you can't be okay with it. Not completely. Not so quickly."

"I have to be," Knockout cried. His intakes gasped from his crying and he could barely manage to cycle air without horrible sputtering of his vents. "I… have to be… fine. Have to be… functional. I need a purpose… not much left… but need to try… to live… to learn… to do… need… to… keep… going..."

Arcee sat for a moment, saying nothing and simply letting him hold into her hand while she rested her other arm over his chest panel again. She slowed her own intakes, and slowly he was encouraged by that to calm and slow his. His state of upset and the stress his struggling intakes had put on his frame had caused the usual tension to build quickly in his body again. And after a short while Arcee gently pulled her hand free from his, so that she could hold it again in a way that allowed her to gently work on relieving the tension on the many complex joints within the left hand while she just let him keep on crying without voicing any negative judgment at all.

"No, you don't need to be okay." she insisted, as she went on gently working, and he felt a kind of silent appreciation, even so far from a state in which he could have said a thing about it. "Not all the time, anyway. I think that you are finally starting to really process all this. To really face the true reality of this. And that's actually a good thing."

"Arcee, I don't want to be like this forever! If I get the furthest I'm likely to now, it won't feel like it's enough. I wanna go fast again. I wanna hold things with both hands instead of dropping everything. I miss my work in the medbay. I wanna be in there as more than either an errand bot or a fragging patient."

For what must have been a good while, he simply went on crying hard, wordlessly venting months of frustration at the limits of a dysfunctional body, of almost constant terror at so many horrible possibilities both real and imagined, at the true reality of just how so many tiny things he had never given a thought to before, might just be gone forever. His frame began to tremble a bit and then much harder from the stress the extreme emotion was sending through his frame. He moved his stronger arm over the one Arcee still held firmly over his body, still wishing on some level that he could push her away hard enough that she might just give up and leave him. On a greater level though he feared exactly that more than anything else.

"I… I'm sorry… for snapping..." he said, managing again to speak after so many long minutes. He tears only fell harder and his sobbing cries grew louder. "I… didn't mean to… I didn't mean to… I would never shout at… at you..."

For a good while Arcee only stayed where she was, allowing, and even encouraging of his horrible crying. Her intakes were slow, steady. And it was only that that let him calm his own once again too. Knockout tired for the first time to really imagine how long many centuries of living really might be, and for the first time ever he really began to understand all that might mean – both the horrible and the good of it all. That only caused him to cry harder all the while wondering how that was possible.

After some unknown amount of time, he just stopped with no tears left to cry, no more energy to put into any more emotion. He looked up through the haze of washer fluid left behind in his optics, and faced his own feelings of embarrassment and near humiliation at what he could only consider just another unacceptable show of his own pathetic weakness. But through that haze of moisture he saw Arcee smiling at him slightly, calmly.

"I would never tell you your life will be what it was again… that it'll all be fine," she said, still calm, still smiling a bit. "How could I lie and say I know that for sure, when really we both know that nobody does. I won't ever tell you I think it'll be easy for you... for both of us really. It won't be. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth it. I'm not throwing away anything. Who knew I'd ever have a future or that second chance at a life you mentioned. I do have dreams of course. We both do, just like anyone else. Some will happen. Some won't. That's just life doing life. And if you ever call yourself a busted pile of junk again, I swear to Primus, I'm going to borrow Ratchet's favorite old head bonking wrench!"

"I can't dance with you," Knockout mumbled absently, still looking at her as his optics began to finally dry. When she gave a look of confusion over the seemingly random comment, but said nothing, he went on. "You talked about your creators… How they'd play music and dance together… How you wanted..."

"I'd only have stepped on your feet, if we had had the chance to try that one." Arcee laughed out load, making him smile back at the suddenness of it. "They were good at it, yeah. But that hardly means I am."

"I don't believe I ever really tried when I could have," Knockout mused. He was not unhappy. Simply thinking out loud now. "I can't say if I would have been good at it."

"Ha. Well we've got ages to figure out things to be good at together."

"I've done terrible things." Knockout changed the direction of the conversation a little. "I know you believe I can be forgiven for that. I believe this whole base thinks the same by now. Or at least I hope so. But still, I've wondered before if perhaps my dysfunctional broken condition, was some kind of punishment handed down by a force far greater than us all, for..."

"Please don't believe for a second in nonsense like that. We were all at war. We've all down so many terrible things. Autobots too. And on the other side, fighting against us for so long, you were so far from being he worst of the worst..."

"Arcee. Can I be completely honest?"

"Well I certainly wouldn't want you to be anything else." Arcee was laughing a bit as she answered. But her expression stayed serious all the same.

"That evening awhile ago, we went to sit outside and I asked you to be my bond mate – I saw your face-plate light up for a second, nodding your head and sputtering speechless with coolant in your optics. I'd been expecting you to take on that slow and quiet voice that we all try to take on when we want to spare feelings, and you would refuse for practical reasons, while trying to spare mine. I fully expected you may have explained that it could have been so perfect had everything been different. If only we had fought on the same side all along. If only I was functional both in mind and body. If only a lot of things. It took me the rest of that evening to really realize you hadn't said any such thing after all. But as soon as I finally got that through my head, that's the moment I started to fear I had basically fragged up your entire life. Through my poorly considered, impulsive idea that just maybe..."

"Is that why you've put off bonding five times now? It confused me, because it was you that asked me in the first place..."

"I suppose I want to be sure you've really had the time to really think about this. To consider the full implications of being the mate of a former 'con who will always be judged for that, long after the war finally ends for good. And for us it's worse than that even. We're far from being old bots, Arcee. But so much of our lives together will be moving so slowly on a world where others race around the streets in their vehicle forms…

"On some level you still doubt I really want to be your mate forever," Arcee said. It was not fully a question, nor was it fully a statement. She looked look down at him with that same look on her face-plate, that showed her understanding and complete lack of any judgment.

When Knockout gave only a silent nod in reply, with his expression serious and bordering on sad again, Arcee moved a little, shifting the positions of their bodies so that she could hold onto both of his hands. She smiled again with a look that showed anything but the doubts he was so he would see only after he had given her good reasons.

"I would love it if tomorrow night was finally out bonding night," she said. "Neither of us has an early morning duty shift the morning after that. We'll make it clear to the rest of the base that if anyone comms, or otherwise bothers, either of us before midday, it had better be because the entire roof is on fire." When she smiled again, he smiled back at the same time.

Knockout may well have been happy to stay there awhile, just as they were in that moment, and it looked to him like Arcee so clearly was too. When she finally wiggled out from under him, and gently let his head fall back onto the pillows at the top of the recharge station again, it was only because of the light knocking on the door.

"Speaking of interruptions..." Arcee mumbled with a shake of her head as she moved, with no obvious hurry, to get her feet. Her tone was one of only mock annoyance and she laughed lightly.

"It's already morning," Knockout mused as he finally thought to consider the time.

"Sleepy bots this morning it would seem," Ratchet remarked as he stepped in through the door, which Knockout had unlocked and slid open for him using the voice command. Arcee only then got up and stood on the floor.

"I suppose I had better… unplug the mobility cart," she mumbled with a look of sheepish embarrassment on her face-plate. Typically she would have done that well before then, and pulled it closer to the recharge station to leave it in front of the closest wall.

"Is everything alright this morning?" the old medic questioned. There was obvious concern in his voice. And Knockout realized with some unease, that the evidence of his earlier emotional state still showed on his tear-stained face-plate.

"It's fine," the red bot answered slowly, and meant it. In the light of day, and after some time to think, to talk, to consider and cry, it all seemed far more hopeful again.

"I'll grab a washcloth, and we'll get you cleaned up a bit before we go to work," Arcee offered, speaking without turning around, as she struggled with the stiff plug-in for the cart's charging cord, and an outdated power supply outlet. Knockout mumbled his thanks, smiling slightly at her until he realized that she of course could not see him from her position kneeling on the floor and facing the wall. Arcee quickly pushed the cart much closer to the recharge station, before she hurried of to fetch the washcloth she had mentioned bringing.

"You know, I'm always around if you need to talk about about, well anything really," Ratchet said, as Knockout lay on the recharge station, looking up and listening. "That applies to all bots on this base, including you."

"I know," Knockout answered quietly. He never said it but he was grateful for the reminder anyway. He considered for a moment, before he said slowly "So it looks like you're staying on Cybertron now then."

The old medic nodded. "I was back here a couple of Earth months before the big boys in the US military called to say I had a month to get back or my contract would be terminated. I told 'em go ahead. Terminate it. I know where I'm needed, and now I know I'm needed here."

"Yeah." Knockout nodded his understanding. He felt relief at the news, where he never thought he wold.

"Ready to get up?" The old medic questioned.

Nodding, Knockout lifted his right arm, bending it a little, and ready to be lifted up, ready to help as much as he could in moving his body onto the cart. The job o f moving him had become simpler as the months went on. He was much stronger now, and instead of being fully little more than dead weight against anyone lifting him, he could hold himself up well enough to maintain a still unsteady sitting position on the edge of the recharge station, only he was pulled up. From there it was a far more simple matter of being lifted up and placed onto the cart's seat. But even that second step was simpler, with him starting to support more and more of his weight, as he braced his right leg on the footrest.

As it was that morning, Ratchet left him to try to sit, supporting himself on the edge of the recharge station for a moment, in the midst of transferring him over to the cart. His feet slipped forward against the floor and the red bot fell to leaning against the old medic, but he had first managed to hold himself up for long enough to smile a bit at having done so. Knockout realized at once that he had only fallen over because he had been let go of without a change to balance himself. He remembered that he had done it far longer when he had been actively trying to. Once he was sitting properly on the cart, he reached his right arm forward and held into a stable part of the frame, which held up the tray in front of him, so that he could hold himself up steady while he was strapped in.

As all three of the bots left the room and turned into the hallway, Knockout looked to see Arcee grinning at him brightly. He looked back at her for a moment, baffled by the grinning, and nearly colliding with a wall, as the corridor rounded a corner and he forgot to steer the cart to the right. But watching her a moment, as he corrected himself and went on rolling forward, with her now laughing lightly at his near mishap, he saw her joy in having seen him sit up so well, even if only for a moment before he slipped forward. He understood that she had noticed how he finally managed to hold himself up, without leaning to one side before he could be safely secured in his seat, She saw how much he was truly regaining when he had forgotten to count those tiny bits of progress as worth anything at all.


	23. Chapter 23

"Ratchet," Arcee called out quietly. She stepped entered the medbay and stepped clearly of the door, so that it could slide closed behind her. "Have you got a minute?"

It was not uncommon, over the last few months, for the medic to treat an increasing number of returning refugees, for any and all manner and degree of injury or illness inside the Autobot base medbay. And Arcee crept further into the place carefully, still quiet, never sure of exactly who if anyone might be in recharge somewhere inside.

At the moment though the place appeared empty. Each of the several sliding dividers was pushed open, all repair tables and the couple of recharge stations were empty. No one occupied any chairs around the place. And it was only after one more careful look around that she found Ratchet, in the furthest corner, intently working on some project or other of his at a worktable, and with his back to the room.

Arcee wandered closer and stood behind him. For a moment she watched as he read complex sets of formulas from a data pad that he'd propped up to lean against the wall in front of him. Several small containers filled with energon of various colors and types sat to his left, and she watched him pick one up and swirl it lightly in before he held it up toward the overhead light he stood under. He shook his head, muttered a little, saying something too quiet for her to make it out and picked up the data pad. He read it over carefully, and then flipped the page backward to read from what appeared to be some shorthand notes.

"Is this a bad time?" Arcee questioned, more than willing to leave him to his work.

Immediately the datapad flew from Ratchet's hands and crashed face down onto the surface of the worktable, as he practically jumped from the floor, startled. He turned around fast with a hand over his chest-plate.

"Never sneak up on me like that," he said with a shake of his head and slight chuckle of laughter. "I'm an old bot, Arcee. You might just give me a spark attack."

"Sorry. I thought you would have heard me come in here."

"Hmm… I suppose sometimes I get so focused on my work… Then consider too, you are probably the only bot on this base that has any concept at all of walking quietly in the medbay, instead of all that stomping like a wrecker."

"Smaller feet," Arcee reminded him, laughing. She gestured toward the worktable, curious. "New science project?"

"I've been busy again with trying to create cybermatter. I thought this morning I was pretty close... but now it still looks like I'm missing something. Something so small you'd barely notice the mistake. But when it comes to a formula like this, even a tiny mistake can mean failure."

"Cybermatter? The basic building blocks of our planet? Ratchet, our planet is alive again. We succeeded. Is there really any reason for you to be trying to manufacture more?"

"It's more than just the building blocks of Cybertron." Ratchet stepped away from his work and began to gesture with his hands, in the obvious excitement of a bot passionate about his project. "On the most basic DNA level, it's part of every Cybertronian too. When the cybermatter project first started, I would have thought you'd have been right. Once we had just enough to make a good attempt at restoring the planet, that would be the end of the project. Because after all, there would be no further use for the stuff. We'd know we could make it, but we'd never really want to, or need to. But then Bumblebee fell into that pool of it in the midst of battle, and instead of killing him, it was obvious the matter had done something I was never able to do for all of my trying."

Ratchet took several stepped forward across the room, only to turn again and pace back toward his worktable, while his hands continued to wave with an enthusiasm that made Arcee smile. He went fight on speaking, and gradually the pace of of his speech increased until he was talking much faster than he usually did. "I've run scans of 'Bee's frame, inner workings, codes, wiring… I can find nothing wrong. No signs of repaired damages… It's just as if nothing was ever broken at all. Typically, when damage to a bot is repaired, even by the best medic, some bit of evidence of the damage will be left behind..."

"You're considering that cybermatter may have a medical use some day?" Arcee filled in the blanks, as the old bot kept on pacing in his short path back and forth.

"Indeed," Ratchet said at once. "Someday we will be back to where we were before the war, back to a point where medics will have far more to work with than salvaged parts and anything we can rebuild. But even then, in the idea situation, way back in the golden age, there were always many things medical science could not do, or at least not do very well. Vocalizers, spark casings, so many other components within a bot's body; we just never found a way to do much but to improvise, hope for the best and leave a bot to live with the best we could do…"

He stopped both speaking and pacing suddenly, and stood quiet and still in front of his worktable, facing her.

"Sorry, Arcee," he said after a second. "What was it you wanted?"

"I needed to speak to you for a moment… I can come back later if you'd rather get back to your work."

"Oh I'm pretty certain my work can wait a few minutes." Ratchet made his way to a chair a ways away from his worktable, and dragged another one closer to it, before he sat down, and invited her, with a gesture, to take a seat herself. "Now, what is it you needed?"

"It's about Knockout," Arcee said. "This has been on my mind all day… we had a very bad night last night, and..."

"Now I suspected so this morning. But is seems you had things under control. You're good with him. Good with knowing how and when to handle something on your own, and when to comm for urgent help."

"What is his likely outcome going to look like?" Arcee was direct and to the point, and instantly she almost completely regretted her approach. She continued on far more awkwardly. "Please don't assume the answer will effect my choice to be his mate… I only ask because..."

"Arcee," Ratchet interrupted her firmly. He leaned forward and lightly put a hand on her shoulder panel. "Please, never feel like you need to justify anything. I understand it's not selfishness that motivates you to ask such things." He paused a moment and shook his head just a little. "The fact is I still just don't know for sure. I could give you my best answer, but it would only be a decent well educated guess based on what I've seen so far."

"I would like that much better than absolute unknowns," Arcee persisted, determined.

The old medic nodded slightly, and moved his hand away from her shoulder panel to place it back into his lap. He leaned back in his chair. "What's become clear to me in the process of working with him for so long now, is that we were actually dealing with three related but still separate problems, all caused by the same series of processor malfunctions. The first issue was simply that of the processor, and in turn the body, simply forgetting or losing so many of its ordinary functions and movements. That was always just a matter of forcing it to relearn the forgotten functions and movements. He's done well with that, and with more practice will get a bit further still. Writing on a datapad for instance is still a tricky one. But his handwriting is always improving. Then, there's an issue of both physical strength and balance. Again relearnable to an extent. But it will take time. Determination. The biggest problem I've seen in all this, is the third issue."

He paused for a moment, in which Arcee just stared at him, waiting for him to go on. When he didn't, she encouraged him with her intent focused optics, and the calmness on her face-plate to continue on, to trust her not to yell at him for the bad news that she always could see a mile away. Finally he went on, speaking slowly, in a tone of compassion and understanding.

"There were more than a few connections to both the frame and even the structure underneath that – all of them routed to the left side of the body as you can imagine – that look to be either severely weakened, or even, in the case of a few entirely obliterated. There's still the hope that the connection will repair on its own, to some extent, but I can't be sure of how much, if at all, and how long, if ever. Reteaching will do no good in this case either. How can I teach a processor to move and control a limb when it can't find that limb, or know that it exists."

"Sounds like he's gotten almost as far as he'll likely get..."

"No no, not at all." The look on the face-plate of the old medic was hopeful in spite of his news. "Successes now mostly be will be smaller ones. But still there could be so many of them. Writing neatly on datapads. Handling more awkwardly shaped objects without dropping them, balancing stacks of several things at once… And I'm not ready yet to say I've done all I can. I don't believe I have. I would like to see him sit himself up someday from laying. With the right equipment and his own strong will to keep on trying I think someday he'll be getting on and off the cart on his own. I'd like to try to teach him to roll to the side and back, both to reach something beside your recharge station, or just because who doesn't want to be able to move if they want to. The right arm could regain its full function. It's close now as it is, but simply lacks some needed strength. The left arm and hand could maybe do slightly more."

"He's been saying for a while that he'll likely never walk again..." Arcee felt the full force of the dread she been been denying herself as soon as she said that out loud.

Ratchet shook his head with a look of sad regret. "He understands his own condition well. Perhaps a little too well. I suppose that's the greatest downside sometimes in having a patient that is also a fellow medic."

"Even in his own struggle, he always tried to make sure I understood…."

"Knockout loves you more than anything, Arcee. If someone had hold me not so long ago that I'd be saying that, I would have dragged them right to medical in order to carefully examine their heads… He doesn't want to see it break your spark to watch him try and try at so many things that should be so simple, and to never fully function again."

"He feels like I'm giving up my life, my whole future to care for him. I explained that I don't think that way at all. He feels like asking me to is selfish and wrong." Arcee slumped a little in her chair. She sighed a little. "I told him this is what I want. That if our lives are different from those of others, that's not all bad. He just can't fully understand how no one just off lined him by now for being 'broken.'"

"Arcee, Knockout said it himself once. He never had the best role models. Your lives together will never be easy and I don't just mean because of his physical condition."

"I know. I think he and I both do."

"He would never tell me himself. We both know he's a stubborn fool when it comes to reporting his own medical status to me. But I need to know, have there been anymore random processor reboots?"

Arcee shook her head. "Not since the one I reported to you recently, that he had while laying on our recharge station."

"Good. And you'll report anymore that may happen?"

"I certainly will. Uh… speaking of random reboots… should he still be rebooting like that in the first place? It's been months..."

Ratchet sat silent a moment, considering, before he finally answered her. "Sadly, Arcee my answer here is the same as I've given to so many related questions. I just don't know. A case like his is something we study at the medical academy as a theoretical and highly unlikely scenario. No one was ever supposed to expect to come upon a case of severe processor failure quite like his, and if we did, medical teaching told to expect that our patient would die and quite quickly. There were once a total of four pages anywhere in existence, on the condition. And not one of then contain a single line of text pertaining to what to expect if your patient lives. When I say I'm working in the dark here, flying blind and improvising as I go, I wholly mean it."

"Maybe you'll write the book someday on catastrophic processor failure and the prognosis for recovery." Arcee grinned with a new level of admiration for the old bot. "Someday there will be a brand new academy of learning on Cybertron. There'll be a great need for new textbooks..."

"Knockout and I will write it together, yes." Arcee had been only partly serious, but the medic's tone implied strong future considerations already under way. Both smiled then to think that the bots yet to exist on their world, would once again pursue education in so many fields.

"Arcee," Ratchet said then, as he stood up from his chair. His expression turned back to professional and businesslike as ever. "When you have a moment, would you mind sending Knockout in to see me? Yeah, I fully realize he's likely going to grumble over hating me for this, but I really need to run scans again. I was supposed to have done that days ago. Give that bot a way to get around and all bets are off it seems… Ever since he's had his mobility cart..."

"I'll get him in here if I have to drag him," Arcee promised. She chucked lightly, but all the same she knew it was a serious matter. As much as Knockout disliked being in the medbay as a patient in even the smallest of ways, the frequint scans were needed due to the unpredictable nature of his health.

"Tell him I can scan him quick while he stays sitting on the cart," the old medic suggested as Arcee stepped toward the door. "No reason to fuss with hauling him off of it and back on again, and I just need quick basic scans with the hand scanner anyway. He might just hate me a little less that way." The old bot chucked.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

"Hey Bulk'" Arcee said, smacking the big green bot lightly across the backs of his shoulder panels, once she had found him sitting in front of the monitoring board, near the far wall of the room that the bots used as their common room.

Bulkhead sat with his enormous feet propped up on the edge of the desk beneath and monitors, drinking from an energon container, which he nearly spilled onto himself, startled when she smacked him. He managed to steady the container, but then nearly tipped himself backwards and right off the chair while doing so.

"Sorry," Arcee said laughing, while she steadied the chair with both of her hands before he could fall. "Looks like I'm two for two today when it comes to scaring the scrap out of my own colleagues."

"You walk too quiet."

"So it would seem," Arcee gave another small laugh, and shook her head. "Bulk', have you seen Knockout? I've been over this base from top to bottom twice, and I can't find him anywhere. Ratchet needs him in the medbay..."

Bulkhead shrugged, then considered a second. "Did you look outside?"

"Twice."

"Comm him?" Bulkhead suggested. "He's gotta be somewhere."

"Well of course he's somewhere," Arcee mused. She chuckled again, with another little shake of her head. "I don't want to comm him, and have to explain on the comm why I'm looking for him. That will only give him more time to run away from Ratchet."

Bulkhead only shrugged again, and for a second his expression was one of genuine confusion. "But… Knockout can't run..."

"You know what I meant..." Arcee was interrupted by the chiming of her private commlink frequency.

 _-_ _Arcee!_ _Arcee. I have a bit of a situation… -_

 _-Knockout?-_ Arcee's fuel tank dropped with dread, when she heard the urgent tone of his voice over the comm. _-_ _Where are you?-_

 _-The far end of the main road._ _I need some help. Bots are screaming angry. Somebot's got a gun. Another one has a metal bar…-_

Knockout cut the comm, before Arcee could even question what it was he was doing down the road from the base to begin with _._ She remembered that his weapons had never been reactivated again, after Ratchet had been forced to deactivate them at the beginning of his medical crisis. Of course even were he still armed, Arcee knew it would do him little if any good at all in his current condition. She turned her attention back to Bulkhead.

"Bulk'. With me. I'll comm Ratchet on the way out. He can take over the monitoring station. And call 'Bee to come with us too."

The Autobot base had once sat alone in the midst of crumbling buildings in various states of ruin. With the rapid and endless work at restoration, it now sat instead, at the edge of a small commercial district. A newly constructed and smooth little street made it's way right past the main doors of the base. And from there, it was only a very short dash up the road, to and ever growing row of little shops of every kind, each determined to meet the needs and even the wants of a steadily growing returning population.

Generally, the little shopping strip was calm and quiet in daylight. Filled only with the noise of conversation, a burst of laughter here and there, the sounds of engines and bots yelling out word of new goods available. But that day as Arcee rolled up to the end of the road in her vehicle form, with Bumblebee and Bulkhead right behind her, the scene that greeted her was anything but one filled with calm and laughter.

"Frag the whole lot of you!" A large and intimidating bot in a dark green paintjob bellowed, over the many hushed conversations of refugees, probably discussing what to do or what to make of the situation. The Green brute waved around his integrated blaster, but thankfully showed no immediate threat of firing it. He waved his unarmed hand in the direction of a much smaller red and gold colored bot, with chipped paint and a nervous look in his optics. "You got a lotta nerve, tossin' me out. I didn't do nothin' wrong!" A small femme youngling, green just like him, and wide optic-ed with fright, tugged at his arm until he shoved her behind him with a snarl of anger, and a raugh smack against her shoulder panel..

"Hassling my costumers is hardly nothing," countered a smaller red and gold bot, who was obviously the proprietor of the little shop behind him.

"Hasslin' customers!" The green bot growled. His blaster waved though the air a bit, making the gathered crowd gasp with anxiety. "Please. I hardly think tossin' out trouble a useless shopkeeper is too dense toss himself is hasslin' anyone."

"No activated weapons in the street," Bumblebee shouted over the arguement. He stepped with confidence into the crowd and made right for the angry green bot. "Section five under the civilian legal code. Put it away."

Knockout had been at some point forced out toward the center of the street. And he now sat on the cart with a look on his face-plate clearly somewhere between helplessness, and burning anger.

"Ha, good. The Autobot army showed up to break this up," some other bot, a slightly smaller bright blue one, with his hands tightly clutching a heavy metal bar, shouted in a tone of mocking. He stood on the road, staring Knockout in the optics and brandishing the bar, with threat is his optics. "They'll get rid of this piece of slag for sure."

"You've got a lot of nerve!" A teal and white painted civilian hollered from the roadside. He pointed a finger in the direction of the bot with the bar. "Shoving a poor disabled bot into the roadway! You got rust in your processor? What's the matter with you?"

"He can shop here," the proprietor said over the growing uproar. "He wasn't hurting anything."

"He's Decepticon scum," the green brute hollered. Thankfully he had complied with the order to put away his blaster. But now he advanced toward the shopkeeper with two clenched fists held in front of him. His youngling tugged again at his arm.

"Creator please," she begged helplessly, with optics even wider. "Let's just go."

To the horrified shock of at least half of the gathered crowd, he shoved the youngling away from him hard enough that she lost her footing and fell onto the edge of the street. Her metal clanged against the road with the force of her fall. One lone civilian rushed forward to snatch her up and drag her backward into the crowd with an audible cry of his own anger.

"That's an Autobot," called another murmuring voice in the crowd. "Not a 'con at all. Can't you see his faction symbol?" Others began to mutter with their own agreement.

"Autobot symbol or not," growled the bar wielder, as he swung his makeshift weapon around again, "still looks exactly like a 'con to me. Anyone can wear a faction symbol. It don't mean nothing..."

"My Creators were Autobots," the big green bot yelled, continuing with on with his threatening tirade, and still brandishing his fists. "Fought the good fight in the war for this planet and both of 'em died, at the hands of scrap like him. If they'd had their way and I'd had mine, every slaggin' 'con would be lyin' in bits and resemblin' a scrapyard! If I'd had it my way every one of ''em would be tried for crimes against Cybertron. "If I'd had it my way..."

"If you have many opinions, then why weren't you an Autobot?" a voice yelled from somewhere in the crowd, and near the door of the little shop. "Scrap the 'cons for this, and try 'em for that, but I don't see any sign of you having joined in the fight you claim to believe in!"

"I have a youngling to care for," the green brute objected loudly and with another growl. He raised his voice back to a full on yell and hollered, "now here I finally managed to bring her home to the world she shoulda' been born on, and I can't even take her into a shop without running into some Decepticon!"

"He's an Autobot," another voice yelled, from a place near the first one that had spoken that obvious fact.

"You have a youngling to care for?" someone else screamed out at the green brute in the same second. "Maybe so, if by care for you mean abuse and treat like scrap. We all saw you push her to the ground like she's some piece of junk!"

"I'm a simple business owner," the red and gold proprietor yelled from in front of his doorway. He waved his arms madly around, in the air in front of and above him. "I can hardly sell goods to one side, either side, and not to the other. That would mean I've chosen a side. I don't care who fought the war and I don't care who won. I simply want to run a business without bots screaming and yelling inside my shop!"

"Knock it off. Everybody knock it off at once and disperse," Arcee cried as she pushed her way gently and yet forcefully through the small crowd gathered in and near the street, with Bulkhead right behind her. Inside her chest-plate, her spark pulsed with a decent mix of frustrated anger, and determination. She held a hand up in front of her, while the other gently but forcefully pushed bots to the side, as she walked forward.

A loud clang of metal against metal rang out over the noise of bots yelling at each other. A second later another clang followed. Knockout had been hit twice in the front of his chest-plate, by the bot that held the heavy bar. He sat on the cart, stunned, angry, and gasping hard for an intake of air.

"Ha! Got him!" The bright blue bot laughed as though it was some game, and waved the bar in the air, clearly meaning to hit him again. Not a second later he did so, to the gasps of shock from a mostly appalled crowd and a cheering growl from his rowdy dark green pal.

Any bots that still stood in front of Arcee and Bulkhead moved aside at once at that point, so clearly understanding their urgent intention of aiding a disabled bot now in clear danger.

"Fragging tin head!" Knockout yelled, his own voice sounding over the murmurs of the crowd. "Leave me alone. Please." His tone was one of anger, frustration at the ignorance of the bot that was still so clearly intent on beating on him. But behind that emotion that was fast building into rage, was a clear and obvious tone of fright, pain, and dread over further harm he was all but helpless to prevent.

He rolled himself forward a short distance on the cart, clearly only trying to escape the trouble maker. His right arm was expended outward, palm up to show that he wanted no trouble. He had traveled only a short distance, moving toward Arcee and bulkhead, when he was hit again, much harder this him, and from the side as he turned the machine. The red bot's frame rocked to the left violently and he bumped against the support frame, as one side of the safely harness was jerked loose and came unclipped from the buckle below the tray. He steadied himself as well as he could with his stronger right hand, which quickly started to shake from the effort of doing so.

Bulkhead shoved his way forward then, grabbing the cart, to steady it from the front as it rocked to the side from a final blow against the bot's frame by the heavy bar. In the next second he had let ago again, and turned to leap right at the offending blue bot, knocking him to the ground as the bar flew from his hand. Bots and weapon landed with a few thumps and clangs and Knockout sat, mostly steady, struggling and gasping again for an intake or air.

"I'm good. I'm good," Knockout gasped at Arcee when she approached fast and stood leaning close against the cart's frame, to his right side. Arcee looked from him to the crowd and back again, to see the group mostly dispersing no, and mostly shocked and disgusted. A few stood nearly, all of them bots who had clearly been against the actions of the troublesome pair. Further away a few more, had managed to shove the large green brute to the ground and hold him, while Bulkhead steered the blue fellow out of sight with a scowl of warning across his face.

"Ratchet will want to look you over when we get back to base," Arcee said to her soon to be mate, as she carefully helped him to sit himself up straight. She could the shaking of his body and even hear the slight rattle of his armor that it caused, and understood just how much he was struggling both physically and emotionally.

"Let me help, let me help," Bumblebee urged, with a steady hand on Arcee's shoulder as soon as he was able to run over to them. He quickly found the safety harness thankfully undamaged, and was able to refasten and tighten it, while Arcee helped Knockout hold himself as closet to sitting as he could.

"You think you can drive this?" he asked the red bot after he had stepped backward with Arcee. Knockout greatly disliked to be pushed on his cart. But it was possible if needed, to override it's motor with a click of a switch under a front wheel, to allow anyone to push it from behind.

"I'm fine," the red bot said at once, just as anyone might have expected, refusing to be pushed. As soon as Arcee had carefully lifted his left hand to place it near the hand control, he tapped his foot against the power pedal and rolled forward in the direction of the base.

"You okay?" Arcee asked him, after Bumblebee had raced on ahead in his vehicle mode. She reached out to put a hand on Knockout's shoulder panel as he rolled ahead and she walked slowly beside him, matching the speed of his cart. He turned his head a little, to look at her and kept on moving.

"It's just a few dents," he said. The anger he had showed in the street, the humiliation, and the helplessness all disappeared completely from his optics and instead he only smiled at her in assurance. "Surface damage really. Of course that bot knocked the wind out of me, but..."

Arcee wanted to say far more. She wanted to question him and make him talk about feelings she knew he surely had about the whole incident. But his expression alone told her to give it a bit, to let him speak to her when he wanted to. The look in his optics was one that told her he surely would sooner than later, if only she let it rest for the moment and let him simply think over his own thoughts about it all first.

She had led him off the main road as soon as she could, ducking between a couple of close together shops, with him following, just barely fitting though on the cart. The narrow pathway behind the shopping strip was empty, quiet and the pair traveled together side by side with Knockout rolling on the narrow walkway, and Arcee content to tromp along next to him, over the uneven, bumpy, unworked ground beside the path.

"What were you doing out there at the far end the road, anyway?" she questioned, curious.

"I wanted to buy energon sweets," Knockout replied. He gave her a silly and almost embarrassed look, and kept on rolling forward. He turned the cart to follow a bend in the path. "I heard Smokescreen telling Bulkhead this morning about that little shop, and that the little old bot that runs the place, is running a decent little business, selling all manner of homemade old fashioned energon sweets. He apparently has almost anything a bot could imagine. That reminded me of your story of digging through the candy bowl for two specific favorite flavors. I thought perhaps he'd have some. It was all good and well too, until that big green lug-nut head, walked in and decided it was a good idea to demand the shopkeeper throw me out for no clear reason."

"We need to make a point of taking walks more often," Arcee said smiling. For a second she considered what she had said, wondering if that might have been a wrong way to say it, but realizing there was no other way to make her point without it sounding ridiculous or just awkwardly silly. The grin he flashed her way though told her he knew what she meant. "We'll go back sometime and buy sweets, now that we know there's a place to get them"

"This is close to my top speed," Knockout said after a moment. His expression turned serious. "This contraction could go a wee bit faster on a perfect and smooth walkway. But I'd still be moving slow."

Arcee only smiled at him again. "This world moves so fast, with everyone just racing around everywhere. We miss so much and never even think about it… You sure you're still okay with driving that yourself? I don't mind pushing you if you feel too unwell."

"I'm pretty sure I look worse than I feel. I can still take a bit of a pounding a be just as fine as any bot might be."

"Sadly I know I'm just as guilty as others of fearing it would take so little to cause you catastrophic damage…. of forgetting that I know very well it won't."

"I think it's in our nature to think that way." Knockout smiled with understanding, and nodded a little as he considered. "You really aren't bothered by going so slow, so that you can walk with me?"

Arcee gave a little laugh and then considered seriously for a moment, as they both kept on moving. "I think it truly bothers you, more than it does me..."

She stopped him and the cart, with a motion of her hand, so that she could kneel in front of it for a moment on the walkway. She looked over the bottom of the cart, considering its design for a second, before she stood up again.

"I'm the furthest thing from an engineer, or a mechanic," she said as he rolled forward again with her walking beside him. "But I wonder if its really possible to make it go faster outdoors. Let's talk to Speedbreaker next time we see her hanging around the base. She built your machine. If anyone has any idea how to upgrade it.."

"Ha," Knockout gave a loud laugh and grinned, shaking his head in amusement. "An image so quickly comes to mind of Ratchet trying very hard to kick her tailpipe for that."

"I'm not so sure," Arcee answered back. "I think he might just be okay with it. Ratchet is as interested as we are to see just how far you can go, how much you can do. He wants you to really have a quality of life just like anyone else. And if a faster cart would contribute to that… Speaking of Ratchet… before you comm'd for assistance, I was looking for you, because he asked me to. "

"Hmm," the red bot mused. Arcee could see right though his look of feigned innocent cluelessness in under a second flat. "I wonder what he could possibly have wanted? Rehabilitation work is usually later in the..."

"You've been dodging scans and a check up!" Arcee shoved playfully against his stronger and functional right side, as she scolded him and they went on moving forward along the path. The base came into view around another slight bend and they made for the security locked side door.

"I can't get much past you as it is now," Knockout protested. He stopped the cart and sat still near the door, while she entered a pass code into the keypad next to the door. He watched her smiling. "I'll never stand a chance against you once you're finally my bondmate after tonight."

"Nope." She grinned back, and gave him and the cart a playful shove through the door. "Now, decision time. Are you going to roll on into the medbay like a big bot, or am I going to drag you?"

The red bot raised his good hand up into the air in a gesture of mock surrender, and rolled forward with a mumbled, "I'm going, I'm going."


	24. Chapter 24

"Hello?" Speedbreaker called out into the empty corridor, as she wandered slowly off the lift and out into into the lower level of the Autobot base. When no sound at all greeted her in reply, she walked forward, rounding a bend in the hallway slowly. The small refugee was certain she may have wandered into a restricted area of the base, and a place a but of neutral status may not have technically been allowed. But the place was quiet late that morning, and she had yet to actually find anyone.

Curiosity got the better of her as she continued forward, and her careful steps became more hurried as she wandered past a row of empty and unlocked cells that were clearly unintended as prisoner lock ups. She paused in front of the door to one of them and peeked in, only to see that there really was nothing to see, but stark gray walls and a narrow bench that looks for from inviting.

A moment more of walking and she came to a door, obviously unlocked because it slid open when she stopped in front of it. She looked in past the doorway of what was clearly a large room used for recreation and quiet time. She wandered in to find it empty of occupants too. Speedbreaker stepped backwards and out the door again, letting it slide closed behind her.

The next door she found led right into a large training gym, and the little refugee stood at the door, wide optic'd in surprise at the lone bot she found inside. Speedbreaker stood for several minuets, watching a black and dark purple bot with his back toward the door, and who was practicing the motions of unarmed combat maneuvers with a level of perfect precision that she had never seen from anybot before. For several long moments, she stood saying nothing at all and fascinated by the motions. The bot, she understood simply from observing, was clearly far stronger than he should have been given the lankiness of his tall frame. And he was fast, and perfectly coordinated in his motions.

When her optics finally wandered away again, she took more notice of the inside of the training gym and slowly began to walk further inside. The large room was mostly empty and entirely uninteresting, with dull gray walls and a floor covered with shock absorbent rubber landing mates, in a plain dingy blue. A closed door on a back wall held a sign indicating it lead to a blaster range. And in the far left hand corner a couple of hang punching bags hung from the ceiling above, bolted securely onto heavy duty hooks. A simple metal bench mounted along part of the side wall, would have been just as unexciting as anything else in the room, if not for the strange little bird that was perched silently on the back of it.

Smiling now, Speedbreaker crept closer to the bench and to the creature that sat, unmoving, on the back of it. The little bot had never seen a creature anything like this one before, but from somewhere in her processor, a once learned and now barely recalled bit of acquired knowledge told her that a bird should have been startled away from its perch as she got closer. But it stayed where it was, turning wiry red optics to her as she crept closer. Even when the bot eventually stood in front of it close enough to reach out a hand and touch it, and then when she then hesitantly moved to do so, the creature only stayed put, and even appeared to look her over.

A fast motion behind her caused her to pull her hand back before she could make contact with the creature and she whipped around, mildly started, to see that the darkly colored behind her had stopped his practice and taken several impossibly fast steps to stand close to her. With a tiny laugh of nervous amusement she realized it was only reasonable that the bird clearly belonged to him, and that he had moved fast in concern for his pet.

"I've never seen anything like him before," Speedbreaker said, with a grin and gesturing with her optics toward the little creature still rushing on the bench. She reached a hand out to it again, but this time she did so with far greater hesitation. "He's so cute."

The refugee turned to face toward the bot that now stood behind her, and for the first time since she had entered the room, the two of them stood facing each other. Speedbreaker's face-plate had been lit by a bright smile at both the stranger and his pet. But was gone in a second, and replaced instead by an expression of utter shock and dread filled surprise. Her vocializer let out a small cry of dismay to match her look perfectly and she clamped a hand over her mouth at once, as she took several quick involuntary steps backward.

The bot that looked down at her, was for all intents and purposes, entirely without a face, or any discernible features. Suddenly he appeared to her, to be so much taller than he had appeared before, looming over the small young bot, as she took one more step backward toward the wall. Visible faction symbols indicative of Decepticon loyalties caught her attention then and she gasped again audibly against the hand that she still held clamped over her mouth. The faceless Decepticon stranger took a step toward her, and long arm and powerful arm reaching toward her in a motion that could only have been threatening, aggressive. Recalling all to well the skill with which she had just seen him practice, she took several more fast steps backward, as he advanced forward.

"Soundwave!" a voice spook from across the room, from the direction of the blaster range doors, in clear and no nonsense warning. "Desist this instant. Not one more step!"

The faceless stranger lowered his arm and stood where he was. But his shoulders and knees held firm, rigid in near defiance of what was so clearly a direct order. The sound of hurrying footsteps crossed the room, and Speedbreaker continued her nervous backward steps until she crashed hard against the body armor of another bot that had come to a stop behind her.

She let out another sequel of shock and her intake promptly gasped in fright, at the firm grip of a hand on her shoulder panel. She was pulled around quickly, and let put the intake she had been holding, when she found herself looking up into Bumblebee's bright blue optics.

"Whatever it was you think you were doing, don't you dare do it," the black and yellow bot said in the direction of the faceless stranger. His right finger pointed toward him in a gesture of seriousness and his tone was one that Speedbreaker hand never heard from the typically friendly bot before. Those blue optics glared in his direction like laser beams.

Bumblebee pulled urgently Speedbreaker out through the nearby door of the training gym, and into the corridor. As it slid shut behind them, he leaned lightly against the wall and appeared flustered and shaken himself as he looked her over. She learned against the opposite wall and as her shock faded and she caught her breath, her optics met his again, looking for explanations.

"'Bee, who is the pit was _that_?" she exclaimed after another second of just staring around in the corridor like a youngling fool.

Instead of giving an answer, Bumblebee instead gently guided her with one hand away from the wall and then with that same hand lightly against her back panel, he led her through the corridor and toward the lift.

"That bot is Soundwave," 'Bee finally explained, after the lift doors slid shut and sealed the pair safely inside. The black and yell bot frowned. "He's a tricky one to deal with, to put it mildly. You aren't hurt?"

"I… I'm fine," Speedbreaker quietly answered, before she mumbled her assurances that the bot had not even manged to touch her before 'Bee had stepped in.

"Speedy, you stay well away from him," 'Bee warned after a moment, and as the lift came to a stop on the upper floor of the base. Before they got off the lift, she put his hands on both of her shoulder r panels and let his optics meet hers intently. "To be honestly I have no idea what he might have done if I hadn't been leaving the range and just happened to catch him when I did. Maybe nothing. Maybe one of a few horrible things that I don't even wanna try to guess at. He's defected from the 'cons, but that doesn't mean anything about him makes a hint of sense on a good day."

"He's a defector?" Speedbreaker had been so terrified at seeing his symbols of loyalty, and then so confused as to why he was on an Autobot base in the first place. In her young mind it all made far more sense now.

"Yes. But please don't assume that means much. Because the first former 'con you ever met just happened to be Knockout, a bot that's trying so hard to be good, and truly does have a good spark, I worry your viewpoint may be a bit dangerously flawed when it comes to anymore that may defect."

"I… I didn't realize.."

"The same goes for that little bird too," 'Bee said, almost as an afterthought. He shook his head a little with a look of almost disbelief across face-plate, before he finally laughed slightly over the whole thing. "Of all things, I never thought I'd ever hear anyone refer to Laserbeak, the most troublesome of the 'cons' spies and infiltrators as 'cute.'"

"I thought he was a simple and tame pet."

"She. And not in the least," Bumblebee answered quickly, before his look changed to one of curiosity. "What were you doing down on the lower level in the first place?"

"I was looking for Knockout," Speedbreaker explained. She reached quickly into her storage compartment, and pulled out a small light yellow bag, which she held dangling in her hand.

"My creator sent me to bring these over to him," she explained. Her optics gestured toward the bag in her hand. "He owns the little sweet shop at the end of the road. He said there was an incident there yesterday. A fuss started inside the shop and then it quickly spilled out into the street. Creator told me a disabled bot on some kind of mobility cart had been shoved out into the roadway by a some tin head that was screaming insults at him until some other trouble maker just couldn't seem to mind his own business and joined right on in, and with a makeshift weapon no less." She gestured toward the bag with her optics again and looked back at 'Bee. "When I told Creator I knew who the bot must have been that was attacked, he said that the poor bot had only been trying to buy some sweets when he was shoved outside. And he asked me to bring these to him."

"I answered a call from base for back-up on that mess in the street. I had no idea that was your creator's store."

"It is. He was obviously flustered and shocked by the whole mess. And it sounds like Knockout might have been hurt."

"He's alright," Bumblebee answered. "Knockout's not as breakable as he probably looks. Bot with the bar underestimated him, that's for sure."

"Who the frag does that?" Speedbreaker exclaimed, in a tone that did nothing to hide her clear and obvious disbelief at such behavior. "Who hits a disabled and damaged bot, and tries to knock him off a mobility device? Damaged or not, some thought it was okay to beat on him. I guess somebot called him Decepticon scum… You said it yourself 'Bee. He's trying so hard and he's got a good spark."

"You're a good bot, Speedy," 'Bee said with a grin that faded again in a second, as he turned serious again. "You want to see the good in the world, the good in everyone. Not that that's a bad thing at all, I say. But of course for everybot like you that wants to think anyone can be good if we only let them try, there are just as many that want to see only the evil and the past mistakes."

"I guess that's the trouble with us that stayed neutral," the little orange bot mused aloud. "We many never have truly joined the war, but still most still did choose a side to support, even if only silently. Not all are like Creator, that only want to sell goods and live and let live."

After a second, she held out the bag, and spoke again. "If you see Knockout around anywhere, would you mind giving him those?"

Bumblebee took the bag from from with some hesitation and thought and nodded slowly. "I will," He said, with a small laugh. "Though he may not be around much for a while. Not with a brand new bond mate. I'll give those to Ratchet for him to pass on. He's likely to see him first, in order to move him to the cart."

"Hey, 'Bee, do you think Ratchet might let me use the workshop out back again someday soon?" Speedbreaker asked, remembering the second reason she had come by. "I was asked about some modification to Knockout's cart. I figure I can work overnight, get it done while it's not needed."

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Arcee woke from recharge, to find her body warm, pressed tightly against Knockout's body armor, and with his right arm wrapped comfortably around her. Slowly, without moving away from him, she looked up to find him staring at her with already open optics and a smile on his face.

"Morning," she mumbled, immediately smiling back. She considered a moment before quietly mumbling with a slight laugh, "please tell me it _is_ still morning."

"Not quite midday yet," Knockout said with a slight laugh of his own, after a fast glace toward the digital display across the room, placed conventionally where he could easily see it from a laying position on the recharge station. "Still morning." His little smile turned to a silly grin then.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Oh not long. Well maybe a while."

"Why didn't you wake me up?" Arcee mumbled still sleepily. But instead of making any move to get up, she instead moved so that she could rest her head on top of his chest panel and put both her arms around him.

"Now why would I want to do that?" Knockout answered, with the smile still never leaving his face-plate. "You clearly needed the recharge, or you would have woken up sooner."

"We should probably comm Ratchet, let him know we're ready for help to move you to your cart whenever he's got a moment," Arcee said. But her voice held an obvious tone of reluctance and still she no move to actually get up, so that she could get anything done that needed doing. She only raised her head slightly so that she could looking into his optics again. "You probably want to be sitting upright."

"No. Well I do, yes. But not just yet. Right now I'm happy to stay just like this, let this morning, this moment drag on forever." Knockout held onto his new mate tighter, as though just by doing so, he truly could make time pause for a while.

"Me too," she giggled back at him. After laying for a while in comfortable and nearly motionless silence, Arcee slowly and carefully shifted herself again on the recharge station, so that she could lay on her front, with her elbows bent and her head resting on her folded arms.

"So," she asked then, looking him in the optics again from that new angle and smiling again. "What do you suppose our home is going to look like?"

"Home?' Knockout repeated. Suddenly he sound so disbelieving and utterly clueless it made Arcee giggle again. "I never dared to imagine… us? Our home..."

"No one on this base will live here forever," Arcee said, laughing happily, with her laughter causing him to laugh a little too. "Someday soon we will all have new little homes just like the refugees and most of the returning Autobots are living in now."

"We would live on an upper floor in one of the high rise buildings," Knockout said, his confidence returning as he finally dared to shape the daydream that she was so clearly encouraging. "The place would need a working elevator obviously, but the views would be amazing. Our front windows look out toward so many other little apartments, and shops, and the road far below us at the edge of the commercial district. There's a huge set of sliding doors out the back way, and those lead out to a wonderful balcony we will spend our evenings sitting on and looking out at the perfect view of the sulfur field, and the cliffs far beyond that. Our place is simply furnished but tasteful as you can imagine. The walls are light metallic gray, with perhaps a hint of blue. No maybe violet. There is one wide hallway that leads to our lovely little recharge room, and there are windows everywhere to let the light shine in from morning until night."

"Eventually the city will grow up all around us of course," he went on, optics half closed now and his voice quiet. "Someday we not see the endless yellow field anymore. Eventually we may not even see the cliffs. It'll all just be more and more buildings for miles. And then we'll sit outside and look out and realize that a thousand Earth years have passed and we barely noticed it all in the excitement of just living as the world changed. The war will be forgotten then to history. Factions will be a part of ancient stories that bots love to tell their younglings, but no one really thinks about anymore. Legends will grow, getting bigger and bigger, until some of it's true and most of it isn't. And that day, looking out at the world that grew up when we barely thought to notice it, we will decide it might be time to repaint the apartment."

Arcee let herself flop down carefully so that she could lay using his chest panel as her pillow again, as washer field pooled in her optics.

"I didn't know you could paint pictures with words like that," she said.

"I've never really tried to before," Knockout answered.

Arcee snuggled in tighter against him. "We have have a such a great and happy life."

"Starting out with so close to nothing… we get to build it together. It won't always be the easiest thing to do."

"I do so love a challenge. I'm not sure life was supposed to be easy exactly."

A beep from the room's commlink startled both bots from a state of narrowed optic's half sleepy daydreaming. Two pairs of optics fully opened again, and the pair of bots groaned at the interruption.

"Connect commlink..." Knockout said out loud, using the voice command function to activate the comm. Arcee half sat up on the recharge station, and half leaned her body against him, searching for her sense of motivation to get up.

"Terribly sorry to bother you two," Ratchet said somewhere on the other end of a commlink, his voice recognizable at once without a need for him to say so. "I realize obviously that it's generally impolite to bother a brand new bonded pair. But no one comm'ed me for assistance yet, and Knockout, I figure you probably want to be sitting up on your cart soon."

"Do I need to do rehabilitation today?" Knockout almost whinnied over the commlink. Arcee giggled, but then she promptly gave him a light and playful smack to his shoulder panel.

"Well, I am willing to let you take a break from it today… and only today…" Ratchet said quickly. "But that said, I would prefer if you still agreed to do it today anyway."

The pair looked at each other silently for a moment before Knockout confidently answered toward the comm that he wanted to, and Arcee grinned encouraging approval at him, as she stood up from the recharge station. A second later she was on her knees across the room to unplug the mobility cart. She spent a moment fighting with the armrest and lifting the front tray into an upright position. And finally she pushed it over, to leave it in front of the wall closest to the recharge station.

After Ratchet had come to the door a short while later, and after Knockout had been transferred to cart, and then following an opportunity to refuel, Both Knockout and Arcee were surprised when they were led by the old medic toward the lift to take them to the lower level. After they had followed him onto it and Knockout had managed to turn the cart somewhat awkwardly, so that he could face forward, the pair spent of the short trip downward, simply exchanging confused and baffled glances at each other, questioning, while telling one another at the same time, that each of them was just as clueless as the other.

"Getting you onto your cart is simpler all the time now," Ratchet commented as the lift came to a stop. When Knockout nodded slightly at the acknowledgment, he continued. "When transferring both on and off lately, you've obviously been both supporting a decent part of your own body weight, and starting to keep your balance at the same time. Today was the most efficiently we've ever done it."

Knockout nodded again, and smiled a little, allowing himself a moment to feel pleased with his own efforts.

"I do feel like I'm clearly far stronger now, than I was at first," he said. His tone turned hesitant as he mused, "it's… honestly hard now to think back to the early days after my… hmm...malfunction. I do remember of course, and I've since read over my own medical report. But to recall just how much I served as simply dead weight, unable to hold myself up at all… to recall how when first learning to operate this mobility cart, I was so entirely dependent on both the restraint harnesses, the seat back and the armrest in order to not fall off helplessly… But then to realize that I should be dead – that any known medical literature says I should not have been savable..."

Knockout pulled on one of the harness straps, as he rolled out of lift behind the others. He was becoming well known for a tendency to pull with his right hand on one or both straps, if they felt uncomfortably tight against his chest panel.

"No sense in us trying to rework the harnesses right now," Ratchet said when he noticed the frustrated fidgeting and pulling. "I'll be transfusing you back off of there again in a second."

When the old medic came to stop again, in front of the doors to the training gym, of all the most unexpected places in the base for him to have lead them, the other two exchanged baffled glances again.

When Ratchet walked into the gym and headed straight for the middle of the room gesturing for the others to follow him, Knockout hesitantly rolled the cart forward with Arcee walking slowly beside him. He clearly noticed the strange new feeling of it at once as the cart rolled across the springy rubber of the mats that took up much of the floor, but he managed to roll ahead just fine on its surface in any case.

"Landing mats will make a perfect surface to try this on," Ratchet explained, in his typical serious but not unfriendly tone. He stomped one foot lightly against the padded floor, both to double check it's resistance, and to emphasize his point. "Besides, on the floor, we have all the space we need and there's nowhere to fall."

"What… are we doing now…?" Knockout slowly questioned as the old bot lifted the movable armrest of the cart back into an upward position, and he looked around understanding that there was no seating surface to be transferred to. For the first time in a long period of rehabilitation work, he sounded genuinely nervous about what might happen next.

"We're going to see if you can't start learning to roll yourself sideways and back again today," Ratchet explained. Carefully he unfastened the harness straps and immediately put his arms out, as he had done so many times in past months, to keep the damaged bot from slipping forward dangerously.

"I can't possibly do that," Knockout protested, uncharacteristically anxious and speaking faster than was typical because of it. Indeed he had advanced a great deal over many months. Still however, such a thing was beyond anything he had even tried before to relearn.

It was a somewhat challenging thing to do, because he had never exactly done it before, and was required to think carefully about how to safely do it. But Ratchet managed to quite efficiently transfer his patient into a laying position on the rubber safety mats that covered the floor.

"There was a time you couldn't even refuel by yourself. Until one day you finally could," Ratchet said. He kneeled on the floor nearby, and with a motion of his hand held behind him, he motioned to Arcee to pull the cart farther back and out of the way. "You certainly won't be able to roll anywhere on your own today. I'd be amazed if you could even start to do it next week. But I had no reason to think you can't learn it all all, ever. Besides, the ability to roll yourself to one side, the right one most likely, combined with sitting yourself up, which we are getting closer to, are the basis for any ability to transfer from your recharge station to your cart, or any seat, and back, unassisted."

"I'm not sure how I feel about being down on the floor," Knockout replied in obvious protest over it. His voice still contained the same hint of anxiety. His long term goal of transferring his body on and off the cart on his own, was clearly known. To now see even a hint of possibility of eventually getting there, clearly made him almost panicked in his potential for failure.

"Oh come on," Arcee answered back, with a good natured laugh. "Every bot on this base can tell just how surprisingly often we end up down there down there while just training together. Knocked to the floor... thrown to the floor… That's why we have landing mats." With uncharacteristic silliness, she lifted one foot and then the other quickly, letting herself drop onto the landing mat underneath her, in a humorous bid to make her point.

Knockout laughed a little then, his anxiety disappearing. Arcee grinned at him, as he sat herself up and bounced slightly on her knees on top of the rubber padding of the floor. Ratchet shook his head, with a look across his face-plate of clearly mock annoyance, as he mumbled over how the pair of 'young bots' really ought to be serious and stop 'goofing off.' But it was perfectly clear how, for all of his complaining, he was honestly pleased to see the pair of them find a chance to laugh and be silly, Knockout especially so.


	25. Chapter 25

Knockout rolled his cart along beside Arcee, as the pair made their way slowly, carefully, though a steadily growing mob of bots, shopping and browsing inside the large shop and busy shop. It was a store devoted home decorating and comfort needs, for the basic and run of the mill, to the fine and far higher end of items.

"Remember, we only really just need a new cover for the recharge station," Knockout reminded his mate, with mild amusement, as her optics, and then finally her whole body slowly turned in the direction of a display of colorful lamps topped by whimsical and over sized shades.

As he spoke up, he quickly lifted his right foot from the cart's power pedal, and moved his right hand to tap against the brake switch at the side of the cart, stopping just in time to avoid a trio of small younglings, running obviously unsupervised down the main isle and giggling loudly. The fact was, he did not mind at all that Arcee was browsing. He might typically have enjoyed some time to do so himself. But the place was just so crowded, and as much as he hated to admit it, maneuvering the cart, in that kind of chaos, thinking all the while that he may just accidentally hit someone with it, was more stress than he liked.

Arcee turned around again, nodding with a tiny laugh, as she smiled in the direction of the retreating younglings, entirely unaware of the near mishap. She walked forward toward of a section dedicated to recharge room supplies, and he tapped the power pedal again, to roll along beside her. Once he had the cart safely parked along side a shelf in the out of the way section of the shop, he let the growing tension leave his frame and let his optics stop watching for hurrying bots he might bang into.

"Which color do you like?" Arcee questioned, still smiling as her hands rifled carefully through the nearest stack of well folded covers on a shelf.

"It doesn't matter much to me," Knockout said with a smile back and his typical adaptation of a shrugging motion.

"Come on," Arcee replied. She held one up - a terrible far too bright green color - looked it over against the lighting above them, shook her head with an expression of disapproval and put it back where she had found it. "Help me with this, will you. It is _our_ room."

"Are you alright?" She asked after a moment, in which he said nothing at all, and only sat staring at the stacks of folded covers. She stepped back to stand beside him, and the concern on her face-plate was just too obvious.

"I'm fine." Knockout smiled again. "I think I just need more practice on this cart in crowds."

He laughed loudly once and gestured with his optics toward the pile and the tacky cover now on the top. "And I can tell you I certainly don't care for _that_ one you just held up."

When Arcee nodded her agreement and made another face over it, he said, trying to be far more helpful, "personally I think I'd prefer a darker color. Navy blue...?"

"That could work. Hmmm, we'll need some pillow covers too. White ones to stand out nice against the dark cover?"

When Knockout nodded his agreement, Arcee turned back to the stack of folded covers. She pulled out a few in similar, but still slightly differing shades of darker blues, and set them down, with a smirking look on her face-plate, right onto the tray of Knockout's cart. After a few steps from her toward the opposite shelf, and after another smirk and a laugh, a small stack of lighter colored pillow covers landed on the other side of his tray. A couple of them where white or barely off white, but a few more were in beiges and grays.

"I just want you to be happy with it," the red bot said, after a half sparked effort at leafing through the little piles with his good hand. He grinned at her and she instantly returned the grin. "Blue is blue. Covers are covers. What would truly make me happy is seeing how much you love the ones you pick out."

With several off white pillow covers on the tray of the cart, and a dark blue recharge station cover folded nearly underneath them, the pair turned back to the crowds of shoppers. Knockout braked fast again as a laughing bot ran out from between two side isles with his hands full, carrying three stacked storage bins. He braked again, after traveling only a foot and a half, when a second bot ran across his path obviously chasing after the first and laughing harder. With that Knockout pulled to the edge of the isle at the first chance he found after that, and parked himself in front of an empty wall, and in a wide gap left between a couple of shelves.

"I… I just need a minute," he said slowly, assuring Arcee, who had followed him closely with greater concern than before written on her face-plate.

"Later in the evening may have been the better time to come in here," Arcee answered in understanding at once, as she looked at the still growing crowd of shoppers.

"Hey, it was my idea to come shopping during hours I knew would be busy," Knockout said in reply. He shook his head a little, and gave a nervous laugh over it. "I can drive this so well on base… I guess I thought the crowd wouldn't matter. But this is a whole new game. The isles are too narrow… there are bots just running every which way… It's funny. There are somethings I truly believe I'll never be able to do, like rolling my body sideways, or pulling myself up. Other things, I things I assume I'll do just fine, and I get so overconfident..."

"Your whole situation is a huge learning curve for everyone, and for you more than anyone else." Arcee lifted his left hand from the control switch so that she could hold onto his fingertips in assurance.

"I want to be able to give you the closest thing I possibly can to typical in the way of a day to day life," Knockout said. He tried hard to hide his feelings of sadness and intense worry, though he knew it was no use at all. Surely she would sense at least a hint of it, and from there deduce far more. "If you say we need bedding, or anything really, and you want to go and shop together or it, I want to be able to take you out to shop. I fear that things like this, things that should be so simple for anyone else, will just become so much of a fuss and bother, that you may just take to leaving me behind to go take care of everything for us both on your own to save time, save the stress, spare us both the stares, the dirty looks… I see how so many of them look at me. So many have this crazy fear in thier optics and the rest just feel sorry for me. I can't say I've decided yet which is worse, and I know you see it too."

"You listen to me," Arcee said. Her tone was serious, but still she smiled, and she swung his hand back and forth lightly above the cart tray, in a variation of the way any pair might just do a similar thing out of simple happiness. "If you want to come out with me and do the shopping, or anything else for that matter, we will both go. If you want to stay behind, then I'll be fast and hurry back to you as quickly as I can. If you want to go off on your own for a while, then you go and I'll wait for you. I don't care how many bots give either one of us dirty looks, and judge, and laugh. You're a person. You can do what you want to do, go where you want to go, just as much as anyone can. And if someone doesn't like it, they can go dive into a smelting pit!"

Knockout smiled then, trusting entirely that she meant every word she had said to him. Slowly she moved his hand so that it rested on the cart's hand control. And it was with such obvious reluctance that she then let go of him.

"If you don't mind, I think I'd rather just sit over here out of the way while you go to the check out," Knockout said, confidant now with an understanding of just how much she truly wanted him to make his own needs known to her.

Arcee only nodded in response, with a smile of assurance on her face-plate. "I'll meet you right back here then. I'll be quick."

From his place on the cart, parked out of the way, knockout took some time to look around a little. Without the constant rush of bots hurrying past him, crossing his path and stressing him so badly with the risk of an accident, he found himself far closer to enjoying being out in the shop, simply looking around him at the colorful and creative collection of goods. After a moment of glancing around at as much as he could see from his safe and out of the way makeshift parking place, his optics fell again on the shelf filled with the lamps that Arcee had clearly been so fascinated by at the start of their shopping.

He imagined just how happy she might be if he were to pick one out for them to buy. Surely she would find him easily if he were to move himself that short distance. And when she did, he could easily already have the perfect one chosen for their room. He felt himself smile a little, and the idea gave him confidence, motivation to carefully move the cart froward again and back into the crowd. He reminded himself with a silent laugh, that he would have to learn indoor crowd navigation skills eventually, and firmly decided some practice with it was never uncalled for.

When he managed to keep pace with a pack of shoppers moving in the same direction as he was going, then to quickly move his foot off the power pedal, to let the cart stop without banging on the handbrake, as two bots turned to walk across his path, his confidence increased.

When one lone bot, a white and pale yellow neutral, came across his path and stopped in the middle of the isle to stare at him with wide and baffled optics, Knockout first felt a flash of embarrassment. He considered his own broken disfuctioning form, and just how it must looked to someone else. His left hand was barely mobile enough to drive the motorized cart in a way that still must have looked positively awkward to anyone who didn't understand he found it far easier than it looked, while the arm rested horribly against the support frame. The right arm and hand could move far more, could bend, could reach. His right leg was at least decently strong, the knee bent just as it should and his foot worked the power pedal, but the left leg and foot both just kind of sat at an odd angle, resting on the cart's footrest and placed so as not to be uncomfortable or dangerous, but still so clearly without any real function. He understood just how much the restraint harnesses pulled over his shoulder panels, to fasten somewhere in front of his body, could only have looked both shocking and concerning to others.

His reaction immediately following embarrassment, might once have been anger, a boiling and blinding rage, that might so recently have made him wish he could knock the staring bot flat onto the floor with the energized staff he could no longer come close to wielding, for daring to think it was fine to stare like that. But he could not find it in himself to feel that rage now. Instead the embarrassment faded into an understanding that the staring bot was only staring – no, not even staring so much as just looking intently – out of concern, mixed with a good deal of curiosity. Neither of those was a bad thing entirely. Knockout gave a slight nod of acknowledgment in the direction of the bot that still stood looking at him with that strange concerned curious expression on his face-plate, and carefully rolled the cart past him, noticing as he did, that his polite nod was casually returned.

"Yo, Red," the voice of a bot nearby caught his attention, as soon as he had stopped the cart in front of the shelf filled with lamps. But he ignored it for a second without realizing that someone was clearly speaking to him. "Get out of the way."

He looked around quickly, deciding which way to move, so that he could get the cart out of that bot's way without blocking someone else's.

"You stupid or something?" the same bot said, far more aggressive now. He was small but he was certainly loud and so clearly obnoxious. Knockout looked at the small blue and green frame that stood in front of him, and then glanced upward to look into a pair of optics that scowled with disgust at him. The obnoxious little bot shaved his knee against the frame of the cart. "I said move it."

Much of the lost confidence he had just began to regain, was long gone again, as moved forward, silent but shaking his head a bit in apology. Almost immediately he bumped the front of the cart lightly against another bot, who it was instantly obvious, had deliberately moved to stand in his way. The bright purple paint-job and laughing face-plate stayed put, in his way while the blue and green bot beside him repeated his demand to move. A second later both of them were laughing. The pair were young, likely each one barely an adult, but certainly old enough that both should have known better than to behave that way.

Knockout never had been one to keep his mouth shut, and certainly not one to sit quiet and take abuse he knew he did not deserve. He may have have been lacking in so much of the confidant self assurance he had once taken for granted. But he still knew full well those young bots were out of line, and he was fully prepared to stand up for himself. He opened his mouth to speak, after forcing himself to intake twice slowly to assure he was more than calm enough to avoid shouting with anger, more than willing to give those two a piece of his mind.

A terrible and unfortunately all to familiar wave of lightheadedness swept over him, before he could form a sentence. The lightheadedness fast become nearly uncontrollable dizziness, and with his right hand beside the seat of the cart, he struggled to hit the brake switch in order to safety lock it into place, in fear of an uncontrolled roll in some direction or other.

 _Please not now –_ he thought to himself desperately, as though strong will might actually help him, when he knew it would not. Struggling to find his voice, he tried to tell the young bots to please back of and leave him alone, tired to explain that he was unwell. But he heard only sounds so mumbled it was barely language from his own vocalizer, and to his sinking dead, that was met only by laughter from both of them.

"He's slow as they come," laughed the purple bot, who was now little more then a spinning blur of color. Knockout felt him jostle the cart roughly. "Who let this busted scrap pile out without a handler?"

"Ha. Who let him live?" the green and blue blur of the other young bot laughed close by.

There was a loud metallic tapping noise very close by, and it was only a second later that he registered that one of the young bots was actually tapping a couple of finger tips against the side of his head.

"Anybody home in there?" one said. It was no longer clear which one it was that was speaking, but both laughed hard before the bot spoke again. This time he was talking impossibility slow, mocking. "can… you.. hear… me..."

"If he can hear you, he'll never tell you so," the second of the young bots laughed. "He can't even talk."

Knockout still struggled with the brake beside him, as he hand started to shake badly. Desperately afraid of a sure mishap, he tapped his hand against the switch to the right of the seat, only hoping one of the bots would take the hint and help him. Two vocalizers only responded again in laughter.

"Unwell… I… stop please… brake..." Knockout tried his best to explain, but he could hear his own words and he knew full well it barely made sense, and it sounded almost nothing like language at all. For all of his effort at speaking clearly now, it was simply not going to happen. Both of the young bots laughed yet again, loudly this time.

"Knock it off!" a new voice cried over the laughter and mockery. "For Purims sake. Back off. He isn't slow at all. Can't you tin heads see he's become ill?"

The troublesome pair must have finally fled then, because Knockout heard the noise of running feet clanging against the floor as they hurried away. But he could not make out their retreating forms among the faster whirling blur of colors from the various panted bots and the inside of the shop. Beside him he saw a blur of a white and pale yellow painted bot, kneeling on the floor to be down at his level. He was conscious on some level of the stranger lifting his shaking hand into his lap, so that he could get to, and activate the cart's brake.

"Hey Buddy," he heard the strange bot say in a voice that now came through a haze of fast fading awareness. The bot spoke slow, clearly and calmly. "Can you talk to me?"

Knockout tried to speak, but he knew his vocalizer was only making little more than mumbled noise as he tried hard to explain that he would be okay in a moment – or least he thought and hoped so. Everything within his field of vision faded for a moment to blackness, and he struggled to fight off a wave of panic at the same time as he struggled once again to make his optics work. The scene reappeared around him, still blurred and spinning and he made out a small cry of distress that he only just barely understood to be his own. He was strapped securely onto the mobility cart, but still he was vaguely aware of his body shifting forward slightly so that it the tension pulled against the harness straps. He struggled to move, to shift himself a little within the limitations of his function. But he couldn't make even his functional limbs co-operate.

"Okay, back you go, Buddy," said the fading voice of the bot still beside him. He barely registered any of it, as a firm pair of hands shifted his position gently so he leaned back a bit against the back of the seat of the cart, so that it instead of the harnesses, held his weight. With another rapid panicked blink of his optics everything faded to blackness as all sound died around him.

When Knockout blinked his optics again, this time repeatedly and fast for a second or two, his vision locked at once on Arcee, who stood facing him while leaning against the front of the cart. A quick glace to his right after a weak smile at his mate, revealed the white and pale yellow stranger, now on his feet again and standing beside him. He glanced around a little more, a sinking dread in the pit of his tank as he recognized the inside of the home decor shop, and a small crowd of bots milling about with confusion clear in their expressions.

"How long was I..." he mumbled without bothering to finish asking the question.

"Not long." the white and yellow stranger said, with an assuring and confidant hand placed on his shoulder panel. He chuckled slightly. "Several minutes at most. You didn't miss much."

"I can't thank you enough for stepping up and helping," Arcee said to the stranger, as Knockout listened and resisted the urge to stare down at the tray at the front of the cart, humiliated by his own condition, while his tank rolled and flipped with the discomfort of returning from a reboot. Arcee had obviously only just returned from the checkout seconds before, to find that potentially disastrous situation thankfully well under control. She lifted her mate's hand from his lap and up over the top of the tray in front of him. Then she just stood holding it tightly with relief clear on her face-plate when he squeezed back, if not more weakly then usual

Knockout wanted to thank the stranger himself, and he did try, but his some of this thoughts seemed to race ahead of him, while others lagged. He could barely form a coherent sentence inside his own head, let alone try to speak one. Finally he managed a still badly mumbled thank you, while the stranger, who had clearly seen – and heard- it all before only nodded his understanding and tapped him kindly on the shoulder panel again. The strange bot walked away then, disappearing into the dispersing crowd without another word.

"We need to get you home," Arcee said, and Knockout only nodded silently. She put his hand down again, fingertips next to the control lever at the front of cart. But instead of pushing his hand against it, he only let it flop to the side, while his optics half shut. His right foot tapped against the floor, missing the foot pedal by inches, and it was only then that he remembered the brake was still locked.

"Sorry, Arcee," he said still mumbling a little too much while trying hard to speak clearly. He tired to look at her, to maintain optic contact, but he could barely hold his optics open, and the still bad flipping and rolling of his tanks made him less inclined to try to. "You drive, please. I trust you."

Nodding, Arcee quickly set the control of the cart over to manual mode, so that she could easily push it forward using the almost never used hand holds behind it. Knockout barely noticed much at all, as she placed both of his hands carefully into a resting position on top of the cart's tray, but he smiled weakly in assurance as soon as he realized she had done so. He barely saw her smile back as she leaned over to release the brake switch.

"Excuse me!" An urgent, nearly shouting voice made him struggle to look around again, as his tank flipped once more uncomfortably, and the room faded away for a second, as his optics involuntarily blinked. A familiar purple painted bot run up beside the pair, one that had so recently laughed at him, and whom Arcee could not possibly have recognized. The young bot smiled now instead of his earlier scowling and laughter. He gave a nervous glace in Knockout's direction and his head fell slightly in what might have been regret for his earlier behavior.

"You forgot your purchases. I saw you drop this right over there," the purple painted young one said hurriedly. He held out a brown paper wrapped box to Arcee, who nodded, and took it from him. "My… my friend and I… we were being stupid. Is… is he alright…?"

"Thank you," Arcee answered back at once. If she was confused by what he had said, she'd only wait to question it later. She quickly placed the package into her storage compartment, and was already walking forward as fast as possible when she hurriedly assured him,"he'll be fine."

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Snapping back into consciousness, suddenly and fast, Knockout blinked in confusion, because he didn't remember ever going to sleep in the first place. With his optics still closed, he detected light, doing its best to shine through from above. And that made him all the less inclined to open them, even if the light was relatively dim. He understood that he was obviously laying down, limbs arranged into a comfortable resting position, and he wondered, confused, over lacking any memory at all, of ever having been transferred off the cart, though he obviously had been at some point. A steady, irritating beeping sound, made his tank drop again in it's familiarity, and he finally opened his optics, blinking a little at the light overhead.

The view of much of the inside of the medbay as he could see from his position, made him groan out loud in annoyance, and when he finally recalled that the last place he had been before losing consciousness was inside the shop and still sitting on his cart, his earlier forgotten embarrassment returned. The steady beeping persisted and it was only then he realized with both dread and frustration, that he had at some point been connected again to monitors. Unable to sit up, or move half as much as he may have liked in that moment thanks to the limitations of his dysfunctional body, he settled instead for a disbelieving and annoyed shake of his head, and another groan of irritation.

When Arcee crossed the room from somewhere outside of his field of vision, presumably having come into through the doors he could not see from there, holding a fuel container in her hands, he couldn't help but smile at him, he couldn't help but smile at her though his growing moodiness.

"I sensed that you had woken up," she said, smiling as she set the container down on a little wheeled table she reached out to grab from behind her, and then pulled over closer to them. "I brought you fuel. You probably need it by now. Are you ready to sit up a bit so you can drink it?"

When he only nodded a little, afraid of what may just come out of of his mouth if he spoke that second, she reached behind the recharge station he lay on, and used the controls to incline its top section up to a decently comfortable angle. He reached out with his right hand, taking the container she offered him. Taking a couple of sips from the fuel container, he realized that he really did need it.

"You look far better," Arcee said, with her hand placed comfortably on his shoulder panel. Her optics held a strange look, but she smiled a little in assurance anyway.

"And I feel perfectly fine," Knockout answered, perhaps a little too close to snapping without meaning it. Instantly he felt bad for his harsh tone and he smiled a little in apology. Lifting the container again to drink of it, he frowned in annoyance at the little monitoring band fastened around his wrist and connected to some machine behind him, by a wire he could easily imagine he may just tangle himself up in.

"Is all this nonsense really all that necessary?' he questioned, his tone softer now. His optics moved mostly toward the little wrist band. But just as determinedly, his look questioned the entire monitoring set up.

"It's never exactly unnecessary to be safe rather than sorry," Ratchet huffed as he entered through the same doors Arcee had just used. He picked up a hand held scanner on his way across the room, and glared in a silent look that said ' _don't even try it'_ when Knockout rolled his optics at the device.

Arcee took the container from him, so that the old medic could scan and then immediately re-scan his body from head to foot. He nodded slowly and made a sound of wordless approval as he did so, and then repeated nearly the same thing on the repeat scan.

"Do you remember what happened?" Ratchet questioned. He set the scanner down on the nearby table. "Any idea what you were doing before you lost consciousness and then woke up here?"

"Sure," Knockout said with his approximation of a shrugging motion. He took the container back when Arcee offered it again and took a couple more quick sips of the fuel. "We, Arcee and I, were just shopping for some bedding. While I waited for her to pay for our things, I suppose I must have started to go into a reboot."

He finished the fuel and reached over, managing to set the empty contain down onto he table himself, before he held up his right arm again, glaring at the band and wire. He looked then at the old medic with another optic roll and a mumbled, "is this really necessary?"

"I realize how much you really dislike and even dread being on monitors," Ratchet said. His tone was softer now. Understanding. "Another half hour or so to monitor your stats while you are awake and talking, and I think it should be fine to disconnect everything."

"I have an evening duty shift," Knockout muttered, displeased. As much as he had once held the mostly exaggerated and misunderstood reputation for being somewhat of a slacker, back in the old life he was trying so hard to forget everything about, the truth of the matter was that by now he had come to pride himself on reliability.

"Well you certainly won't make it tonight," Ratchet said seriously. "Not tomorrow either, I'm ordering a short medical exception. Day after tomorrow we'll talk about lifting it, and I'll carefully consider."

"This is ridiculous," Knockout protested, in a voice so close to a whining pout. He waved his hand about in complaint, trying all the while to avoid tangling the monitor wire. "It was just another processor reboot. This has been happening for the past nine months. Give it a little while and I'm always fine again..."

Ratchet exchanged glances with Arcee, who still stood where she was, with her hand on Knockout's shoulder panel. The sad and serious expressions on both of their face-plates was suddenly unmistakable and for the first time Knockout's frustration gave way to a sinking feeling as he looked from one of them to the other.

"You have no real idea just how bad your condition was when you were brought in this afternoon" Ratchet said. He stepped closer and spoke in a tone of completely seriousness, while his optics were sympathetic behind his professionalism. "Both of us are more than used to finding you sleepy after a reboot. That's normal and yes we let you just sleep it off a while. But Knockout, today Arcee called me for help outside the base. I found you still strapped into the cart's seat completely unresponsive."

"I knew you must have been pretty bad off when you asked me to push you," Arcee explained, picking up where the old medic had left off. "But you are often so tired and out of it after rebooting, it still seemed okay. I must have gotten about half a block from that shop with you half asleep on your mobility cart, when you clearly rebooted again. For a minute after that happened you were wide awake and talking to me just fine. Speaking clearly. Making sense. You were understandably a bit upset about having gone into reboot inside a shop. But you insisted you felt just fine and you certainly looked it..."

When Knockout looked from her to Ratchet and back again clueless and confused, the two other bots exchanged looks again, and Arcee's optics suddenly looked so close to crying in terrified despair.

"You… don't remember any of that at all?" she questioned.

When he shook his head a little, sad mostly because she so clearly was, she continued on explaining. "You wanted to drive the cart yourself again and it seemed like you probably could have. That's when a third reboot happened, and from there you were just gone. I comm'd Ratchet for help. That was nothing I could handle myself and I knew that."

"That bot in the shop," Knockout mumbled, his tank rolling with dread, as realization began to set in. "He said something about it being several minutes… It's… It's usually only seconds."

Ratchet nodded. "So far just under under minute at most, for you to regain consciousness after rebooting. And three within such a short time, followed by complete unresponsiveness… you stayed unresponsive like that for just over three hours."

"You've been monitoring processor activity," Knockout muttered. "Do you have any saved readouts?"

With a barely noticeable nod of his head, Ratchet glaceed toward a worktable to the right. Taking a couple of steps, he reached it and pulled open a drawer to retrieve a data pad, with he started to hold out hesitantly, before he instead held it at his side.

"You'll understand of course, exactly how to interpret this," he said. His words were just as obviously hesitant now as his motions. "These reading were strange, and you'll know immediately, exactly what I mean by that."

When Ratchet once again hesitantly held the pad out to him, Knockout stanched it quickly with his right hand, before he could change his mind and decide to set it aside.

Holding and reading from datapads was always much simpler for him to do sitting, strapped onto the cart – where he would simply read the thing on the tray in front of him and use his right to flip through pages or write in it. But he could, do it, and had before, laying in various laying position he was placed in too, if not far less efficiently. Now he rested the pad flat on his lap, and read from it at an awkward angle. When Arcee, smiling a little, lifted the pad, and the right hand that held it steady, and shifted his body a little so that the left arm rested under it, across his chest panel to balance the pad, he smiled back weakly in thanks. Where he knew full well so many bots might just have grabbed the pad to hold it for him, she had instead only helped him to do it well himself.

"I saved that set of readouts, minutes after I got you onto the monitors," Ratchet said. He waved a hand toward the datapad.

"It's… These readings are all over the place," Knockout mused. A right fingertip navigated the touchscreen, as his optics scrolled over the readout. "Part or it, most of it, is exactly what I'd expect from a bot that unresponsive. With that low level of activity it would be impossible to be anything but completely unresponsive. But these readings for background functions… they're all over the place. Sudden energy bursts, and they are way too high..."

"And that was a forth reboot," Ratchet said when Knockout had flipped the page. "That happened maybe half an hour after the third. Because we were of course still entirely out, we only knew about it at all because it registered on the monitor."

"So… where do we go from here?" Arcee spoke up in a voice that nearly trembled a little for all of her efforts to hide it behind confidant calmness. She looked to the old medic, so obviously trusting in his answer. Knockout looked up too, setting the pad aside on the recharge station again, and letting his expression turn back to his earlier glare of frustration because he could not think of a better reaction.

"Well," Ratchet took a step forward and reached to retrieve the pad as he spoke quickly, confidently. He looked mostly in Knockout's direction, in a way of including him in the conversation, while he spoke about him in the third person. "I just need a minute to disconnect a monitors and such, and then I'll get him transferred back into his cart, so you can both get on out of here. I'm confining him to the inside of the base for the next couple days, and I know you'll be the first to comm me at once if anything goes wrong."

"I'll be giving you quick scans daily with the hand held," Ratchet went on, speaking to Knockout directly now, as he finished disconnecting equipment. His tone was not unsympathetic, but a the same time, it was clear that his decision was entirely nonnegotiable. "We may as well just do that every morning when we transfer you off your recharge station. And once a week you'll be spending some time in here for monitoring."

 **Notes/ Twenty-five chapters now. Yeah, I'm both amazed and impressed actually. Thanks again for continuing to read this and for the comments. Those are becoming even more helpful now because I'm starting to find inspiration in them now for bits of future chapters.**

 **Yeah, I know I just posted something about trouble in a store, and now I've gone and wrote another chapter where sure enough, bots start carrying in another store. But since they are obviously very different, I figure its fine.**

 **A review recently hinted at wondering about future possible** **sparklings** **for Arcee and Knockout.** **Haha. I haven't decided yet.**


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes/ I've been in the mood to write silliness, and this chapter wound up being mostly exactly that. I has every intention of including a scene involving Soundwave again, but somehow he managed to avoid making an appearance this time. He'll be back! Meanwhile enjoy a little cute goofy silly-bot behavior, with undertones of friendship and fluff.**

Grumbling to himself under his intakes, Ratchet wandered into his medbay, in search of a misplaced data pad. Walking quickly through the place, his optics scanned work tables and the tops of cabinets. After a moment of wandering around like that, he shook his head at finding the pad laying on top of an empty repair table, he had most recently cleaned.

The old bot turned to walk back out again, shaking his head again at his own absent mindedness, and holding in his hand, when he spotted Knockout parked on his cart in the farthest corner of the empty medbay. Seeing him, parked in one place, head best forward and perfectly silent, Ratchet's first reaction was to be alarmed. He took several hurried steps toward him. But slowed his pace greatly when he noticed the digital screen resting on the cart's tray, and the writing implement in Knockout's hand.

Hearing the approaching heavy footsteps, made the red bot look up and he turned his head to the left a little, with a slight nod in greeting.

"I'm… trying to relearn how to draw," he explained, answering a question the medic had yet to ask, and with a tone of obvious uncertainty in his voice.

"In the medbay?" Ratchet questioned. He felt on some level like perhaps he ought to be annoyed. But then really, it wasn't exactly hurting anything. Knockout had always been the slightly odd sort of bot, and one whose behavior never fully made complete sense to anyone else. His still relatively recent state of disability, had not changed that about his personality.

"Seems like as good a place as any," Knockout answered, with his usual variation of a shrugging motion. "Decent lighting in here, and if I'm honest Id like to equate the place again with more than just being a helpless patient."

"Fair enough." Ratchet stepped closer and stole a glace at the screen resting on Knockout's tray. "I was unaware you ever did any drawing before..."

Knockout said nothing at all and instead went right back to his drawing practice. Ratchet, watching silently over his left shoulder, looked over the image of something that was clearly meant to be the skyline of some Earth city, a street leaving a bridge and leading away from the city. He studied the rough idea of a shape at the front of sketched image, unable to discern the thing. But the poorly shaped figures that were clearly meant to be round, that he'd drawn underneath, made him assume it may have been a vehicle of some kind of other.

"That's very good," Ratchet commented, because it really wasn't a bad try at all. Clearly Knockout had indeed drawn a good deal before his processor had failed, and clearly he had never exactly been bad at it.

"It isn't," the red bot said. His tone was suddenly sharper. Hints of frustration shook his voice slightly, and he pushed the digital screen back a little on the tray before he looked up at the old medic. "Please don't lie to me like I'm some youngling that needs the confidence boost, and tell me this is any good."

"Considering your right hand is only roughly seventy-five percent functional and your fine motor skills could still use a fair bit of work, that is very good."

Knockout only mumbled something indistinguishable under his intakes, and looked back up at the medic again just long enough to cast him a glare the old bot had seldom seen since the early days after his malfunction. Looking down and the screen again, he tried to turn the writing tool over, with his finger tips, and instead sent it flying from his hand, bouncing over the tray and onto the floor, landing somewhere behind the cart. When the now fully aggravated red bot finally stopped glaring at his drawing screen, he found the old medic had quickly retrieved the writing tool and stood quietly holding it out for him to take it. The red bot snatched the tool back, and holding it upside down, the sat still glaring in frustration while it used the end to tap the screen, selectively deleting small sections of his prior work. He set the device down into the tray so that he could carefully pick it up again, pointed in the other direction, with its tip down, and when he glanced up for a second with the same glare of rage still on his face-plate, he was greeted only with a look in return that may just have scared the most vicious of any bot into submission.

"I was never exactly what Cybertron would have called a brilliant artist, but still I was decent," Knockout mumbled, looking down at his screen, beginning as he spoke, to redraw his deleted mistakes and to do some of it just a tiny bit better. "I might have perused it with greater interest once, if I hadn't been a medic instead. I was so much better than this."

"I can't draw for anything," Ratchet said with a slight laugh. His glaring look left his optics as soon as Knockout's had. "I could say I was never an artist, but that would almost be an understatement. However I do understand of course that drawing is a bit like handwriting in a sense. I didn't re-teach you write. You did that on your own. Ha, I remember the first day I saw you pick up a data pad and take down decent notes on the thing. I had no idea you'd ever be able to do that, and all the while you had already relearned."

"I'd assumed I should have been able to do it," Knockout mumbled, without looking up, still focused mostly on his work, while he conversed. The writing tool slipped in his grip and he let it fall lightly so that he could then pick it up from the tray and continue on. "I don't know whatever made me think I could draw again just because I can write. And I forget sometimes that my writing is still so bad… There are days it still feels to me like progress in anything really, is just much slower than I wish it could be..."

Ratchet only laughed slightly and shook his head, though he knew the motion had gone entirely unseen by the well focused bot he was speaking with. "It certainly looks like on whatever level, you still believe you can learn this again. If you didn't, you wouldn't have been busy drawing away the whole time we've talked."

"I just… thank you," Knockout answered, his optics widening a little and then brightening as he realized the medic's point. He looked up and smiled a second before his optics drifted to the screen again.

"Um hmm," mumbled the old medic with another little laugh and a knowing smile on his face-plate. He gave Knockout a friendly clap on his shoulder panel, only to find that even then he was not distracted from his intent sketching with a writing tool held awkwardly, far too stiffly, in a still unsteady right hand. "Well, you just keep right on drawing in here for a while if you want to. I'll talk to you again when we meet this evening for rehabilitation."

"Training gym again?' knockout questioned, still conversing awhile he sketched awkwardly. His momentary moodiness had clearly departed, and though he still gazed downward because he was hard at work, his expression showed a slight hint of enthusiasm.

"It sounds like you're getting used to working down on the floor mats," Ratchet commented back in place of a true answer. They had worked through the vast majority of their sessions over the past month or more in the training gym, and he had finally started to see the first real – if not silent- signs of any genuine interest in it, over the last week.

"I like working on the floor," Knockout admitted, nodding slightly as he finally looked back up again from his drawing and met the older bot's optics. He gave a tiny laugh. "You know all too well how much I hated it at first. I never was exactly perfectly quiet about that fact. I used to feel panicked, down on the floor, thanks suppose, to a sense of true helplessness. But then it got better. I learned that without a chance of falling I could really try moving far more. I'm so close to rolling now… I have a sense of how to pull myself up into sitting, even if I can't actually do it by myself..."

Ratchet smiled at that, and thumped a hand lightly against Knockout's shoulder panel again. He had intended to leave the red bot alone to finish his drawing. But instead, beginning to act on centuries of well trained instinct regarding his patients, he snatched up the drawing screen and the writing tool from the tray of the mobility cart, and turned away to set both carefully into a work table.

"You're very close to rolling over, yes," he said when Knockout stared at him, baffled and perhaps almost made nervous by the suddenness of his change in plans. "And sitting up completely unsupported, certainly getting yourself to sitting, will be a good while of work yet. But with something behind you to lean against, you can sit quite well now."

"Sure I can," Knockout agreed at once with confidence. He let his body lean forward a bit against the harnesses, as though to prove it to both of them. When he wiggled and turned his body just slightly – a learned motion resulting from the repeated trying at rolling – the harness only seemed to be in the way of slightly further possible motion. Ratchet moved to stand close to the side of the cart and he learned down to push up it's armrest and front tray.

"You balance in there just fine when we put you in and before we get you back out," he said. He felt like he was almost grinning with his own enthusiasm now. "The real problem is see is that you simply don't trust your own sense of balance, or the strength of your body. You say you want to see your next bit of progress?"

Knockout only nodded mutely, his expression showing true confusion now combined with hints of obvious nervous fear, as Ratchet clipped the harnesses and moved them so that he could clip the set up together behind the cart's backrest and out of the way. When knockout was left still dumbfounded sitting up in the seat of his cart, leaning slightly to the left and searching for his own sense of balance, while held only by the belt that fastened around his waist, the old medic re-positioned the armrest and tray into its place beside and in front of him.

"Roll forward," Ratchet commanded, as soon as he had helped the now very anxious red bot to re-position his left hand over the control switch. "Go right toward the far wall, and try to make a turn somewhere if you want to."

Knockout still looked so clearly uncertain at first. He'd grown so accustomed to tightly fastened harnesses holding him firmly against the seat back, that even the slight jerking as the cart started to roll forward, made his optics widen slightly in reaction to a perceived chance of a fall. And he stopped again at once. Not a second later though, he had placed his right hand against the back of the tray in front of him, seeking some means to aid in holding himself up, and off he went again, finally daring to gain speed slightly and roll across the medbay. By the time he had turned around again and rolled back to the place he had started, he had moved his hand back from its place against the tray, and his initial nervousness was clearly close to gone.

"Take your time with this," Ratchet said, as he retrieved Knockout's drawing equipment from the worktable. He held it out to him mostly just to see if he could and would trust himself to reach out to reach out and grab for an object, without the safety of his harness set up. Sure enough, Knockout reached out to take the items from him. "Sit parked and practice drawing again for a while. Drive around a bit in low speed if you want to."

The old medic turned away for a moment, deciding that since the medbay was empty and he had the time, he might as well get busy with organizing his cabinets. But he turned back around instead after several seconds and stood watching as Knockout, having moved himself back into the far corner, straightened the drawing screen that lay across his tray, and picked up his writing tool again. The red bot sat up perhaps a little too straight at first, head tipped forward and focused on drawing lines that were so likely far from as straight as he may have pushed himself too hard to achieve. Gradually though his shoulders began to drop slightly, and he leaned forward just a little in his seat, as his attention went to his work and away from the fear that he might fall forward, which he clearly would not.

Ratchet let his mind wander back a while. He remembered so clearly, laying on the hard ground inside the maze of a Decepticon mining installation, badly wounded and bleeding, while this same red bot stood over him, taunting and mocking, with arrogance and anger on on face-plate. He recalled the gleaming of a well sharpened rotating blade, bright in the glow of raw energon, and the sure certainty that this then insane red bot clearly meant to hack him into scrap metal pieces. He gave a slight involuntary shudder at the suddenly far to vivid memory. He reflected in the present moment, just how hard it was becoming to believe that the bot who had behaved that way, was the very same one that now sat working calmly with a drawing screen in the corner.

Ratchet watched as Knockout dropped his writing tool again, sending it rolling across the tray of his cart, barely catching it in a still slow right hand just before it could fall to the floor. The still badly damaged bot clearly lost his still awkward balance on the cart as he reached a little to far, and he barely caught himself with this hand against the tray back once again, nearly dropping the writing took he had just retrieved. The red bot pushed himself back against the seatback again and rested a moment, doing nothing but staring forward, until he tipped his head down again and resumed his drawing. But though he held himself up in his sitting position, supporting his own weight, he began to sway and lean slightly, and it was all to clear that just holding his balance like that was exhausting. He could undoubtedly do it, at least a bit longer, and no doubt he wanted to, because he said not a word about his obvious tiredness at trying. But the old medic resisted the urge to shake his head in his regret at knowing full well he might just have to strap him back in soon enough in order to prevent him slipping from his seat and injuring himself.

The red bot set down his writing tool then. Leaving it to rest on the tray of his cart, on top of his drawing screen. And slowly he began to roll forward across the medbay again. He stopped after a couple of meters and pushed himself against the seatback again with his functional hand. The left hand, still barely functioning and likely never to be again, had slipped from the position it had remained in resting over the control switch, as the bot shifted himself with greater force, so determined to stay sitting unsupported by his harness straps. Centuries of medical practice and the well learned good sense that a damaged bot needed to be allowed to push himself a little, as the only thing that stopped Ratchet from walking immediately to his aide – though he did of course continue to watch with vigilance for any sign of that still present slipping danger. Knockout lifted his still barely functional hand and arm slightly, the short and nearly insignificant distance he could, and when that was not enough to re-position it, he reached over with the right to aide himself in doing it.

Ratchet set about the task of organizing that now nearly forgotten cabinet. Watching with half an optic and unspoken pride, as Knockout rolled forward again, still so unbalanced but further now from a falling risk then he'd first feared. The younger bot showed his determination when he clearly thought the old medic was no longer paying attention to him in the least. He picked up speed on the cart, turning to follow the far wall, and finally letting a slight smile replace the look he'd been giving of almost too intense focus.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

"What is it that's far far too easy to get into, but usually so much harder to get out of?" Knockout questioned, grinning stupidly, as he lifted his head slightly off the recharge station.

Arcee, momentarily busy at the wash station, peeked around the open door, chuckled loudly and rolled her optics at the look on his face-plate. "I have no idea. What?"

"Trouble." Knockout answered, laughing a little. He did the best he could to bend and wiggle the fingers of his left hand, working to relieve the tension of constantly straining wires. He bent the arm at the elbow the little bit he could bend and move it on his own.

"Ha. Now that's got to be something you learned from Miko." Arcee shook her head, but she laughed a little again at the same time, and disappeared back behind the door. "Do you want a washcloth?"

"Yes please, and thank you, _meine Dame."_ Knockout lay quiet on the recharge station for a moment, listening the sound of the wash station's tap running. When the noise stopped and Arcee promptly peeked back around the door again, he gave another bright grin and asked, "ever hear the one about the two bots that walked into an energon bar?"

Leaving the wash station, Arcee shook her head, as she paused to unplug the mobility cart, while holding a wet rag in her hand.

"Well, the first bot hurt himself, the second hurt himself just a little worse than the first, and the gathered crowd couldn't help but wonder as to why on Cybertron the second would walk right into that bar, after having just seen the first one do so and injure himself!"

"You're ridiculous this morning," Arcee commented with another good natured laugh.

Knockout only looked up at her with his optics bright and a look somewhere between grinning, smirking and trying hard not to laugh. "So?"

"So nothing. Just… You have such a beautiful smile. And its great to hear you laugh like that."

"I do try my best." Knockout grinned up at her and raised his right arm, hand extended and optics gesturing to the washcloth still in his mate's hand.

Arcee looked at him a moment confused, uncertain as she understood what he meant for her to do. With her voice perhaps slightly too uncertain she cautiously asked, "you think you can catch a thrown object?"

"No idea. Never really tried before. Probably not."

She tossed it. He missed it by a mile, his arm far too slow. The damp rag fell, quite comically over the front of his faceplate. He reached up to retrieve it, lightly laughing off his badly missed catch.

"I'll raid the medbay for one of Ratchet's physiotherapy balls, sometime. We can play catch with it outside if you want to practice," Arcee suggested, helpful, positively. She pulled the cart over to park it next to the wall closest to the recharge station. "Ready to get up?"

"Yep."

After a quick comm to Ratchet for assistance, Arcee turned back toward her mate again, in time to see him throw his right arm forcefully across his chest panel, with his hand extended out as far as it could reach. The momentum and force behind that movement allowed his body to follow the direction his arm had moved in, and with some effort, he rolled himself into his left side. Arcee's optics opened wide in shock and amazement, before she gave a huge grin to match the one he was now giving her.

"Knockout… You did it! You can roll sideways."

"First time I've ever done that unassisted." Knockout's grin became instead just a content and happy little smile, and in his red optics there was a clearly thoughtful contemplative look. "I suppose the next step from here would be to drop both legs over the side and pull up to sitting on the edge… But that's a ways away yet."

Knockout was clearly slightly tired out just from the effort of rolling himself, and he lay still in his new position. But he was clearly content just to lay in his new position resting a moment while he mate carefully moved his left arm out of the slightly too awkward position it had landed in.

"You recharged much better last night.," Arcee commented. She sat on the edge of the recharge station. He nodded his head silently at her, the relief a good night's rest had brought, clear in the brightness of his optics.

The returning memories of his own processor malfunction, had been a considerable set back physiologically. And Knockout, whose nightmares and disturbed recharge had been slowly improving as he moved on from his old life, and began to except that he too could be truly happy and productive, had regressed considerably because of the new memories. More often than not, he would mumble inaudibly in panic, while he trembled against his bondmate's frame in recharge. So many nights, she would shake him awake, trying helplessly to save him from his inner terror, only to see coolant tears pour from his optics, as he begged then only slightly more coherent, for her to please not let him die.

The red bot, was obviously not the only one on base to be in an exceptionally good mood that morning. Ratchet was humming a simple tune under his intakes when he came to get Knockout up from the recharge station. Arcee smiled a little, sure she recognized a hint of an old Cybertronian folk song, however off tempo it may have been. And Knockout only lay still another moment, optics narrowed a little in thought, trying with some difficultly to place the song.

The old medic stopped his humming once he realized that knockout had manged to roll himself sideways. He gave him a friendly smack on the shoulder panel and a cheerful grin, before he carefully took the red bot's already extended arm and from there, quickly transferred him to the cart next to recharge station. He left the harness straps fastened out of the way behind the cart and secured him in using only the seat belt again, obviously confidant in letting him sit mostly unsupported as the three of them headed toward the common room for morning energon.

"I did some research on this last night," Ratchet said, sipping his energon and sitting on a bench in front of the far wall of the room. "There's something I want to show both of you. Looks like the place survived the war intact. I wonder if it might still be as nice a place as I remember it."

"What place is that?" Arcee questioned. She leaned forward on the bench with curious interest. Knockout, sitting on his cart, parked facing them both, drank from his own fuel container, leaning back against the seat of the cart, tipping his head forward a little in his own curiosity.

"You'll see it when we get there," the old bot answered with a wave of his finger to deter further questions.

"I asked Bumblebee and Speedbreaker to go out there with us to check the place out," he continued. His optics moved in the direction of the pair of young bots that sat on another of the benches, conversing intently and both of them laughing with smiles on their face-plates.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Leaving the ground-bridge, the bots found themselves in the midst of the small clearing amid high cliffs of tarnished copper and lightly rusting iron. The sun, almost directly overhead, shone onto smooth many colored crystals that littered the ground. A short way across the rocky ground, a pool of thin dark oil had formed in a large natural basin, fed by a stream of the stuff, which poured in a steady stream over a cliff above. A delightful chemical order filled the air around them and the pool bubbled and rolled a little at its center, from an active thermal vent below.

"This is a beautiful place," Arcee commented, not bothering to hide the amazement in her voice, as she looked around a bit.

"I remember this place from way back in my academy days," Ratchet said. He stood looking out over the lightly bubbling pool as he went on, "A whole pile of us young ones – back when I was still a young one mind you- used to come out here every chance we could outside of study hours. There used to be so many of those oil pools on Cybertron. Amazing that this one, the nicest one of them all as far as I'm concerned, survived centuries of war."

"It is safe to go in there?" Speedbreaker stepped closer and gestured toward the pool.

Ratchet chuckled lightly. "Perfectly safe. It should be nice and warm too. We used to jump in there all the time."

The little refugee promptly jumped right into the pool, with 'Bee following not far behind her. Both of the young bots laughed, which made the others laugh too.

The uneven ground was a challenge for the mobility cart, but Knockout, ever determined to get exactly where he wanted to be, managed at low speed, to carefully navigate the rocky surface, choosing a clear path across without getting the small wheels under the cart without becoming stuck even once. He'd been strapped in with the restraint harnesses again, only because of the slight roughness of ground-bridging, and the restraints served just as well to keep him steady while he rolled unsteadily over the ground. Arcee promptly unfastened the straps though as soon as he had parked by the pool, overjoyed to see his smile at simply being free of his harnesses.

For many long moments the pair stayed beside the oil pool, with the old medic, enjoying the strong smell of clean oil and its warming vent. They watched the younger bots splash around in the

middle of the pool, both entirely coated in a good layer of oil by now. They watched, exchanging looks of amusement as Speedbreaker repeatedly scooped the glossy liquid up in her cupped hands, before throwing it at her friend. 'Bee stood for that several times, before he lightly grabbed her, lifted her from the pool and tossed her right back in laughing. The little orange bot disappeared from view, under the surface of the pool, but quickly she surfaced again behind him. He clearly did not notice her reappearance, until she jumped him from behind with enough force to dunk them both.

Ratchet got onto his knees on the ground and investigated the pool with both of his hands in the clean liquid. He nodded silently to himself, so obviously pleased with whatever it was he had found. He looked up at the pair that stood and sat by the edge with something close to a laughing grin on his face-plate.

"Yep. This will work just fine," he mumbled aloud, before his optics met of both of waiting bots. "It's definitely warm enough too. In you two get."

Knockout knew full well he would never be pushed and pressured unfairly to do anything he truly did not feel safe in doing. And the past many months had been more then enough to reach a point of complete trust in the old medic. It was only because of that, that he calmly allowed himself to be lifted from the cart again, and placed into the warm pool, as Arcee climbed in carefully nearby, just as careful not to splash. Being in the pool, gave the badly damaged bot the great benefit of something close enough to weightlessness, and his optics widened at first with anxiety, and then quickly brightened when he realized how well he was floating in the pool.

At edge, not to far below the surface of the oil, the now smooth crystal ground had long ago been eroded away into a decent and almost even type of bench, perfect for sitting on. And Arcee sat on it, taking a second to enjoy the warmth of the pool, and the feeling of the liquid swirling gently against her armor. Then following direction from Ratchet, she reached out to place her hands gently on Knockout's side panels, holding him lightly under both his arms, steadying his body so that he could move both of his arms as well as he could though the pool.

The right of course moved well enough to paddle and even to splash a bit. But with the left, he was gaining far more motion than he ever could have before. The left leg could do almost nothing in the way of motion, even with the great benefit of the pool. But the right was still reasonably strong – he'd taken to frequently moving it away from the cart's power pedal, to push against the frame of the machine, to help shift his position on the seat, or just to lightly kick low cupboards closed – and he presently did well at bending and kicking with it in the pool, while his mate held him safely floating.

After a good while of practicing simple movement, at a low stress and slow pace, Ratchet and Arcee carefully and quickly helped the red bot to re-position his body, and to turn so that he was facing toward both of them. Knockout's optics opened wider than before and lit up with amazement and happiness, as the simple laws of buoyancy pulled him into a position somewhere close to standing with his feet just barely reaching the still relatively shallow bottom. He stayed like that somewhat awkwardly treading thin oil for a while, and even succeeding in turning himself so that he could join the other two in watching and chucking at the pair of younger bots as they continued their goofing off in a much deeper part of the oil pool.

Even with the benefit of a near weightless state though, staying afloat upright, and continuing to tread like that, was becoming physically tiring all too quickly. And Ratchet pulled Knockout into the natural bench, so that he could sit between him and Arcee, and rest awhile. He sat leaning back against the edge of the pool, and smiled with his mate at watching the pair of young bots who continued their silliness further out in the pool.

"Great for 'Bee just to be able to be a young bot for a while," Arcee said, looking out over the oil as it shimmered a little in the sunlight above. 'Bee had been an Autobot since he was newly out of his youngling frame. He'd barely seen a real existence at all outside of fighting for a cause, and endlessly training so that he could continue that endless fight. And with the war effort down to it's last whimper so quiet it was laughable, he had thrown himself fully into the first of his studies to one day be a medic-bot. And that would now take up much of his next century or so.

Ratchet nodded a little, with a noise of approval. "Good for Speedbreaker too. She'll get to spend the best years of her young adult life on Cybertron now, working hard, playing harder, learning what her home can be when we're finished rebuilding. That kid's a bit of an odd one, I've gotta give her that. But she'll certainly go places, and she's not unlikable."

"Well 'Bee certainly appears to like her," Knockout chimed in. Trying his strength and balance a bit, he leaned forward a little, managing to hold himself up sitting away from the wall for the moment. "And Speedy certainly doesn't seem to be complaining about that."

"Bumblebee and Speedbreaker?" Arcee questioned his implication at first in disbelief. She didn't know the little refugee all that well of course. But she did know 'Bee. And to her it seemed the two were just far too different.

She shook her head at the notion, but Knockout only laughed a little, as he leaned back again, successfully re-positioning himself comfortably and without assistance.

"Hey, too very different worked out for us," he said, leaving her to marvel at the idea that he so clearly knew her thought. She smiled to herself when she understood that he truly did. She let the smile show outwardly when she realized that he was very right.

"You'll see," Knockout continued quickly. He smirked at her, kicking his right leg through the oil a bit, slowly. "I'm certain I'm right about this. The way those two look at each other… and they have for a while, its just the same way I looked at you."

Arcee laughed at that, smiling as the noticed the younger pair again, looking for something she had missed before, and he clearly had not.

"So, your old hang out, huh?" she questioned of Ratchet, after the conversation had died out. She chuckled, slightly as she dropped off the edge of the bench so that she could float and tread oil for a while. "Never saw you as the fun outside of studying type."

"Ha," Ratchet huffed, as he threw his head back slightly. "I wasn't always a cranky old bot, you know." He roughly gestured behind him with one arm, in the general direction of a small hole eroded out of cliff face at nearly the level of the ground. "I can't count the times we all got way to drunk on far too much high grade. We used to have that little space so full of hidden empty containers."

"No," Arcee said, shocked and disbelieving. When the old bot only nodded his head at her affirming the truth of his tale, she laughed loudly and shook her head.

"You can't forget about the music either," Ratchet said. He laughed a little, as he remembered. "Oh we'd blast our old tunes down here so loud over portable speakers. Our audio receptors would ring and vibrate for hours after the fact, most of the time. Most of us would sing along with it all, and the more we drank the worse we all sounded, but the funnier we all thought it was just to laugh at each other. It was kind of a thing back then too, to jump from the cliff tops, right into this pool. Brilliant way I must say, to succeed only in snapping yourself in two, hitting the bottom hard. But no one ever did get hurt and we were all just young and careless once."

The old bot sat quiet for a moment in the pool, while both Acree and Knockout waited for him to speak again. Finally he continued on his slightly sad now. "We all grew up of course. Graduated. Moved on to our practices in medicine and science. I lost track of most of those bots. Kept in touch with a few. Then the war started. Many of them became Decepticons. Most bots did. A few left Cybertron I suppose, and a couple were Autobots, now long dead."

"Sad to think that bots that were once your friends could end up on a very different side of the war," Arcee commented sadly. During a long pause in conversation, she stopped treading, flipped herself forward, and dove underneath, for the simple sake of fully submerging herself in the pool.

The first thing she heard when she surfaced again, oddly enough was a loud shrieking scream somewhere behind her. Arcee whirled around fast, looking for the source of the sound, and with ever battle learned instinct she had triggering in under a second. But a second shriek so soon after the first one was filled with obvious undertones of laughter, and the bot let her guard down at once. She gazed out over the pool, just in time to see Bumblebee now standing on the opposite ledge at the far side of the pool, toss a wiggling and playfully kicking Speedbreaker, right into the pool.

"That does it," the little orange bot laughingly yelled, loud enough to be heard across the pool, as soon as she surfaced again. "Now you'll never catch me."

The little bot was certainly fast. She was quickly near the three remaining bots on and near the ledge. She immediately went to frantic and furious splashing, sending thin clean oil in all directions around her. Obviously Bumblebee, who was coming closer to her, was the intended target of her splashing attack. But no-bot was safe from the spray that covered faces and flew at optics, rolling and churning the liquid in the pool roughly. Ratchet huffed in annoyance about it and sat frowning on the natural bench. Arcee laughed once, perhaps too loudly, at the old bot's reaction, and moved, probably quickly wisely to get herself at least slightly out of Speedbreaker's line of fire.

Knockout, sitting up on the bench, and still doing an impressive job of maintaining his seated balance, was being splashed relentlessly, first by the little refugee, and then finally by 'Bee, who did that quite clearly by accident while trying to herd Speedy back toward the center of the pool. For less than a second Arcee was alarmed and more than slightly concerned for his safety, given his lack of strength, poor co-orientation, and dysfunctional limbs. But when she saw how hard her mate was only laughing over it, she laughed too.

Arcee laughed harder when Knockout managed to fling a decent handful of oil right at the little orange bot, with a right hand propelled forwards through the pool. He had always been encouraged, pushed a little bit when it was needed, to do whatever he wanted to do – to try and to never stop trying. And in that moment, he was so clearly determined to simply goof off in the oil pool with the young bots. His balance was reasonable, but still far from great. And with all the splashing, the increasing motion it caused in the pool near him, and his own movement, he lost the balance he'd been holding thus far, falling forward with his body leaving the bench below the surface.

Arcee, still treading oil and floating, moved fast to his aid, trying to hold him under his arms to steady him. But his entirely body and his head fully submerged, pulling her with him. He resurfaced himself quickly enough, just as anyone would, by letting out his intake and floating back upward. Speedbreaker stopped her splashing at once, her face-plate displaying an expression of concerned fright as she realized she had caused him to overbalance and fall in. Near her, 'Bee watched a second with Ratchet and Arcee, ready to act and quickly.

But Knockout was only laughing with a grin on his face-plate, as oil ran off his head and over his optics. His arms went back at once tot heir uneven, determined treading motion, and another louder laugh showed that he simply thought it was funny.

"Is that how it's going to be then?" he asked, smirking as he flung as much thin oil as he could with a not fully functional right hand at Speedbreaker. She splashed back, barely bothering to even do so carefully. A moment after, 'Bee had joined in, splashing at both of them as hard as he could. The pool rolled and churned harder than before and all three of them, treading in the whirling oil partially submerged more than once.

"Stop, stop," Knockout exclaimed after a good while of this. And 'Bee and Speedy both paused quickly, dead in their tracks, with alarm of their face-plates.

"It looks like Arcee needs some too," the red bot cried, laughing hard, as he flung oil toward his mate.

"Frag off," Arcee answered back, flicking small drops of it from her face. But she immediately joining in with the silliness herself, laughing too.

Still seated on the natural bench at the edge, Ratchet went right back to his huffing grumpily, as he shook his head and scooted away from the line of fire.

 **Notes/ I thought a bit about the logic of this and I realized that yeah… I had NO idea if transformers should be able to swim or not. On one hand I fear its ridiculous to assume so. But on the other hand, vehicles don't** **generally** **sink like stones in seconds, so… yeah.** **And of course the properties of oil, would be different from water. But there is NO WAY bots would logically like to be in a lake of water. (rust, lol)** **I just had fun with this one.**


	27. Chapter 27

The sun had begun to set on Cybertron. And Knockout sat on his cart, parked just close enough to the edge of a high cliff to still be safe to be there. Arcee was at his right hand side, sitting on the smooth metallic ground, resting against him and the cart the best she could do, while the sun slowly fell lower in the sky.

"I don't think I'll ever get tired of just watching the sun setting on our world," Arcee said, her tone sentimental and reflecting. "Not after we all came so close to never again having a world at all. To watch it set and to know that it will always rise again, that our home is really okay again… even now, after being back here a while, it's still incredible to me."

"Same here," Knockout answered when she stopped speaking. "Now granted, Earth did have some wonderful views at sundown. It was amazing, beautiful to see it really. But to see ours again..."

He stopped talking again and looked down at his mate, giving a quizzical look, as her mouth fell open slightly and she looked up at him with clear shocked surprise.

"It was a wonderful view," Arcee said after a moment, smiling up at him from her place still seated on the ground. "I'm just honestly amazed that you thought so too."

"Sure I did. I never hated Earth you know, even if it might just have been easy to assume so. It was not our world. I missed our home as much as anyone would expect. But there were things to like. I remember how I would take off away from the worship whenever I could, and drive just for the sake of driving. Just myself on a long and lonely road across the desert of Nevada. I'd drive along perhaps faster than any bot or human driver should have done, watching the sun set behind me and wishing that if I could only just go fast enough, maybe I could just escape whatever it was that I was trying so hard to run away from."

Arcee was lost for anything to say to that. So instead she just leaned further over and let the side of her face-plate rest against the cool metal of his bent knee. The pair sat that way for a while, both just smiling faintly as they watched Cybtertron's distant and almost bright white sun drop lower in the sky above them.

"I have a question for you," Arcee said, speaking quietly as the sun dropped over the horizon, leaving the pair quickly in near blackness. Both bots activated the lights on the fronts of their frames, letting their built-in beams serve to light their own tiny corner of the world.

"I have an answer for you," Knockout replied with a laughing grin in under a second. But as soon as he had spoken he fell silent again considering, before he looked down at her.

"Come up here," he said, reaching with his functional hand, to find the catch that would let him push the front tray and arm rest of the cart up. He grinned at his mate, as he gave it a light upward shove and showed her just how well he could move up the front of the cart himself by then. Surely, Arcee reflected then, the next logical step would now be to simply detach the entire front tray set up from the cart altogether so that he could drive it with nothing in front of him at all, and just pull up to work tables like anyone else would, in order to make use of a flat work surface. The trouble with that, it seemed, was that of course he needed his hand controls… Arcee dismissed any worry about the matter for the moment. Surely that would be worked out with little trouble eventually.

She stood up from her place on the ground, with with some hesitation she lightly moved to place her weight against him and then slide up to sit across his lap with her legs hanging over the side of the cart. She leaned against his right shoulder panel giggling slightly, and letting him use his bent arm to hold her up.

"All good," knockout said laughing a little at the worried look on her face-plate, as she thought about safety. "I can hold your weight just fine."

It was true, his frame could still support a decent amount of weight on top of it. Probably close to what any bot of his size and frame type could hold, really; though of course there had never been a cause to really find out for sure. And she knew he'd quickly ask her to get off again, if she was far too heavy.

"Have you ever thought much about being a creator?" she asked him, still leaning comfortably against his shoulder panel.

"Being a creator?" Knockout echoed the question thoughtfully. "As in us with our own youngling?"

"UmHmm." Arcee nodded against his plating. After a moment she lifted her head again, and turned herself a little, so that she could sit looking up into the pair of red optics that now glowed in the darkness. "I'm just curious. If I told you one day I was carrying…?"

Knockout stayed silent for a moment, thinking hard. Finally he gave a hesitant and uncertain reply. "I cant say I've ever given much thought to it really. I imagine I'd be terrified at first. I'd question so many little matters of practicality. That said though I'd love the young one, and I'd always do the best I could… I know we both would. And you would make a wonderful carrier."

"Any child of yours would surely have the shiniest paint on Cybertron," Arcee said, with sudden laughter.

"Of course," Knockout said grinning. He laughed too. "Perfect buffing of one's paintjob is an important and useful life skill."

"We'd teach our little one that he could be anybot he wanted to be one day," he said after another moment. He still smiled but his tone was far more serious again too. "We'd love him unconditionally, teach him to work hard, and play harder. If his drive to fight for what he believes in and to never give up, was anywhere close to yours he'd be unstoppable. Of course this is all just a what if and a daydream for now..."

"What if it wasn't?" Arcee continued to look up at his optics. Her face-plate visible in the darkness only by glow of their headlight and the shine from her optics, showed slightly more than playful curiosity now.

"What if it wasn't what?" Knockout's tone was anxious behind his confusion.

"What if it wasn't a 'what if'?" Arcee leaned her head back down against against his shoulder panel, and speaking now partly into his armor again she said, "what it was a for real and a now and ready or not, thing?"

There was no reply for a moment. And then another moment wore on without one. Arcee shifted a little so that she could sit up straight on his upper legs. She turned to face more forward and he wrapped his functioning arm around her again in her new position, as she tipped her head back to look at his optics again, trying to read his expression.

"Hey," she said, her tone half joking but her words serious too. "Say something, will, you."

"Are you… do you really mean..." Knockout stumbled clumsily over language, with a look of wonder and shocked confusion on his face-plate.

Arcee only nodded, nervous and hesitant at first, but with a growing grin forming on her face-plate after another second. "Carrying status was confirmed today. I… suspected for a little while but I wanted to wait to say a word about it until I was sure..."

"You've regained so much strength, and you're quite mobile now," she said after another several long moments in which her mate only sat in shocked silence. Through the connection the pair hared as bond mates, she had begun to sense and understand his fast growing concerns and to understand how quickly they were reaching a point close to panic. Though she sensed too at the same time, an underlying kind of happiness beneath the sudden waves of growing fright over it all. "You have independence and there's so much you can do now. That will include doing so much with a little one. The timing is so obviously far from ideal. We still live on base and everything. But it would never have been perfect..."

She stopped then in the middle of a sentence, realizing suddenly just how ridiculously she had been rambling. Her blue optics met her mate's red one's again and she saw that he had began to smile slightly at her. With his functional arm he moved to pull her closer against his frame.

"It was commonly believed once in the city I came from," he said, speaking slowly as his little smile turned to a grin that spread over his face-plate, "that a youngling created on its creators' bonding night would be blessed with a lifetime of luck."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Ratchet hummed the off key notes of a song, as he worked alone in the medbay. He wished as he hummed that he could remember the words, or at least the first verse and the chorus, But it was long forgotten, and all he knew was the tune. Regardless it was wonderful to hum a song again, to feel like doing so – regardless of all the bots over the years that had told him in no uncertain terms how lucky they were he had devoted his life to medicine instead of music, because he could not carry a tune in a bucket.

He busied himself with the overdue collaboration of both of the base's spark monitors, and replacing the weakening battery inside a handheld diagnostic scanner. Then, still humming away, he gathered up a few tools and carried them over to load into the sanitaizer, before starting to wipe down the fronts of cupboards. When he turned toward the door of the medbay after not too long, the old medic jumped back, startled, and wide-optic'd, with a hand held tight over his spark chamber.

Soundwave stood in the doorway of the medbay, silent and completely unmoving. Laserbeak, perched on his arm, tipped her head slightly from the right to the left and back again, but remained as silent and otherwise motionless as her master.

"Well good morning," Ratchet said, gathering his wits quickly and lowering his hand again. He never would admit to anyone on base, just how much both Soundwave and that bird of his unnerved him. Though he could hardly imagine he would have been alone in his opinion had he ever bothered to voice it. He wondered just how long the bot had been standing motionless in the doorway, and could not even imagine how he had managed to approach the door without making any obvious noise at all.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, after a moment. He took step forward toward the door, and through centuries of practice at such things, he managed to keep his tone friendly and even, showing confidence as he walked.

"Soundwave – instructed to report to medical bay for routine analysis."

"I hadn't expected you nearly this early," Ratchet said, surprised. He had indeed sent him a memo regarding said analysis. But he was half expecting it would be a full on argument and battle just to get him to comply. Yet here, he had shown up on his own free will after all, and barely after the start of a workday.

"Well come in then," he said, and gestured behind him with a wave of his hand. "Go and sit up on repair table two.

Laserbeak left her position on Soundwave's arm, and as the bot moved to follow the medic's instructions, the bird began to fly a slow circle around the medbay, staying up high, close to the ceiling. Ratchet nearly shook his head in annoyance about it, but made up his mind instead to simply let her fly. She wasn't exactly hurting anything.

"Have you been recharging adequately?" the old medic questioned, as he reached behind him for a scanner that was sitting on a nearby work table. Soundwave gave no reply, but after a second, the scanner showed clear indication of the bot's lack of rest. Ratchet looked then toward the rough place his optic's would be behind the face-shield. Only then did he notice the network of cracks that spread over it.

"You need to up your energon consumption," Ratchet said. Soundwave's fuel levels were low, in fact barely above a level that should have allowed him to remain fully functional. And he dared to tell him so.

"Full potions, twice a day, morning and early evening," he continued, his tone serious. "Laserbeak as well."

Soundwave only nodded at him mutely.

"What happened to your face-covering?" the old medic questioned. He'd put off any questioning about the matter, but he really did need to ask eventually.

Soundwave only sat still and silent. The medic imagined he could almost feel the strange bot's optics staring into his, behind the series of cracks.

"It's important that I have some understanding of how that happened," Ratchet explained. He made his tone remain patient, though he generally disliked dealing with such stubbornness. "With damage like that, my concern is that you've also done damage to your face-plate."

"Cause – impact with training gym punching bag," Soundwave finally explained. "Underlying damage – seemingly minimal."

"Still, I really should take a look at that. Impacts like that can be quite dangerous. I would be concerned about you having cracked any number of facial components, and done underlying damage."

Soundwave tipped his head down toward the floor and for a while he simply sat like that, looking down, saying nothing and making no move to do a thing. Ratchet could only assume he was going to move to leave the medbay at any moment, refusing to submit to medical care. And he knew he could not hope to push the issue if that happened. But slowly the black and purple bot, reached up and to the relief of the frustrated medic, he unclipped the edges of the broken face-shield, and slowly raised his head again while he held the broken cover in his hand.

Ratchet had of course taken the face-shield off, while repairing a nearly fatally damaged Soundwave not so long before. But there had been urgently pressing injuries to deal with, and because the face-plate had not been among them, he had barely given it a second thought or taken the time to fully register what it was he was seeing.

He realized now, for the first time, just how badly destroyed the face-plate was. The great majority of his facial features had been obliterated, clearly melted away by some source of extreme heat, into a mess of blacked and gray metal, far beyond anything a bot's self repair mechanisms could hope to fully take care of. He had an apparently functional mouth, but judging but the extent to which it was damaged, he was clearly lucky to be able to open and close it at all. He was likely barely able to smile or frown. The bot's optics strangely stayed closed and the old medic cautiously questioned the matter.

Soundwave slowly opened his optics, or at least he clearly tried to to some decent extent. The right one far less than even half open at all, leaked coolant horribly in reaction to the light of the medbay until in only a second it blinked shut again. The left, thankfully still able to function independent of the right, was in somewhat better condition and could at least easily remain open if little else. Ratchet stared for a second with sinking dread at the obviously once bright red optic now long faded to a faint pink with impossibly dim lightening shining out behind it. The old medic, his sinking feeling quickly increasing, held a hand out in front of his seated patient's face a slight ways back from him, and slowly moved it from left to right and back again. Any bot should naturally have tracked his motion, but Soundwave's one still open optic did so hardly at all. With a slight ad shake of his head that he now knew full well the other bot would never have been aware of in any case, Ratchet reached behind him to dim the overhead lights with a click of a near by switch. He quickly fetched a land held light from the drawer of his work table and slowly moved that in one direction and then another near the other bot's faceplate. Hope rose slowly again when he saw him clearly try to track the light.

"Your optics were destroyed along with your face-plate?" Ratchet remarked slowly, still cautious with his words, and not entirely sure if he had even meant it more as a question or a statement of realization.

"How much do you actuality see?" he questioned after another second, not exactly expecting he would receive any answer at all from the bot who spoke so very little.

"Little more than lights, and vague outlines in bright enough colors," Soundwave said slowly, surprising the medic with a clearly spoken answer.

Ratchet shook his head slightly again, in his own disbelief. How could the third in the command of the Decepticon army, the bot who always served at both a communications officer and chief of surveillance have so perfectly functioned while for all intents and purposes almost completely blinded? His gaze fell suddenly on the face-shield, still held in the bot's hand at his side. In a quick flash, something clicked in his processor and he understood that there was clearly more to this bot's always hidden face-plate, than a need to hide horrific damage.

"Lay back for a moment," the old medic instructed then, reaching out, ready to gently take the other bot's arm and carefully assist him, in case he could not determine without vision where the repair table's edges were.

"Inquiry – why?" Soundwave demanded, reverting right back into his awkward formal speech and doing nothing in the way of simply following simple direction.

For a fleeting second Ratchet only shook his head again, this time in mild annoyance at the bot and his blatant refusal of a request so simple and harmless. He'd known full well in the back of his mind that sooner or later he would likely have at least a small fight on his hands with this bot, because Soundwave had fought so much in his own strange and unpredictable ways since he had regained conscious after being rescued by Autobots. The old medic wanted so badly to simply mumble a short 'because I said so,' him. But instead he found himself looking again toward his devastated face-plate. Without the cover that it was usually hidden behind, he could make out an expression on the bot's face, which though so damaged so still at least somewhat capable or readable expressions. On on his, Ratchet suddenly read a kind of anxious fright that so often seemed to come with any bot's uncertainty.

"There's a fair chance at least some of this damage is repairable," Ratchet said, deciding it likely wise to explain now what he ad at first planned to withhold until he was certain of his assessment. He spoke calmly and patiently instead of the near snapping tone he had been ready to use only a second before. Just the simple ability to see and to read expressions on his face, reminded him that Soundwave, for all his far reaching reputation for so many traits that should have made him socially unreachable, was still just a bot like any other. The old medic shook his head again once, this time in his own shame at barely having considered that.

"I need to run far more detailed scans, map out optical relay systems… create a three dimensional computer image of your face-plate so that I can possibly work with a bit later and get a decent idea of what it is we've got to work with here..." he started to explain, this time letting compassionate understanding show in his tone.

Soundwave slowly turned his body so that he could reach out, feeling with his hands for the edges of the surface he was seated on top of. Finally, when it was clear he was certain of where exactly he was going, he moved to follow instruction and silently lay down as directed. With a feeling of relief at not having to face another battle of stubborn wills with this bot at that second, Ratchet left him alone a moment so that he could step several paces back. Concerned for the obvious discomfort to the bot's near destroyed optics, he decided to dim the lights to as low a setting as he could while still comfortably able to work. Just as he had hoped, the right optic sure enough half opened again in the dimmer lighting. Making another quick decision, the old medic activated his comm. Quickly he called up a comm code.

- _Knockout_ _–_ Ratchet said over a private commlink – _you receiving? -_

 _-_ _Yep_ _–_ came the quick reply over the commlink. - _Go ahead, Ratchet. Whats up? -_

 _-Are you currently mobile? -_

The question was hardly an illogical one. Lately Knockout had began more and more to like to spend time off his mobility cart, sitting on benches instead with his teammates. Any of those strong enough to do so, were confidant in transferring him off the cart and back again. More than once now he had even managed to sit on the floor (seemingly he had wanted to) with his back against a wall so that he would remain stable enough. Just the day before he had sat through, and taken part in, an entire crew meeting in such a position, simply because clearly he saw real wisdom in a point Ratchet had recently made, about a benefit to growing comfortable with trying to sit in different positions.

 _-_ _Yep-_ came a quick reply.

 _-_ _Good. Can you please come to the medbay for a moment?-_

The request was greeted only by a momentary silence, and Ratchet chucked over the commlink, as he resisted the urge to shake his head yet again.

 _-_ _I'm not calling you in as a patient again, Knockout, don't panic. I'd like a quick consult with you actually about another medical case.-_

 _-I'm on my way.-_

Killing the communication, Ratchet stepped back to his patient, and immediately he got to work setting up and turning on needed equipment. In the corner of his vision he saw Soundwave turn his head slightly, obviously trying to determine by the sound of footsteps where the medic was in relation to himself. The bot did not put up any real fight, or even attempt to move again, but it was all too clear in the subtle motions of his hands, the posture of his body and the facial expression he showed within his limited capability, that he was anxious anyway. Anybot far less disciplined than this one may well have refused to remain laying, or far worse moved to physically attack a medical officer. It certainly did happen and Ratchet, in his many concerning in the field had lost count of the number of times he had quite wrongly found himself on the wrong side of such attacks against him.

"How are you liking your living space?" Ratchet questioned, making simple conversation while he quickly located and clicked open Soundwave's processor access port, and just as quickly connected a cable to attach him to a scanner. 

"Space – beyond adequate," Soundwave answered slowly. It was thanks only to endless amounts of experience with patients, that Ratchet knew from watching subtle hand movements, that the bot was at some risk of anxiously starting to tug on the monitoring cable.

"You know, you're permitted to decorate your space a bit if you like. It's your living space. Ours are all quite uniquely ours." Ratchet went on speaking a bit. Considering again, he made a quick grab for the cable, moving it so that it fell entirely behind the repair table, instead any of it catching close to the bot's hands on an edge. If his hand could not find it, he know, he could not pull or panic over it.

"I'll need to run a quick analysis on Laserbeak at some point too," Ratchet tried cautiously after another second, and knowing full that he would never get close to the tiny bot without Soudwave's clear say so. "If you would be willing to assist me with her..."

Across the room a door slid open and shut and the old medic turned quickly, looking behind him to see Knockout enter the medbay. The mobility cart was not noisy by any means, much quieter by far than the heavy stomping of a bot's feet. But Soundwave, clearly having picked up the sound of the electric motor, moved a little in order to turn his head in the direction of the sound. His face-plate took on a look of confusion, and growing nervousness.

"I asked Knockout to come and consult with me about you," Ratchet explained quickly, speaking with self assurance. "I respect him as a fellow medic, and I'd value his opinions on your case."

Slowly, and remaining silent, Soundwave nodded slightly.

"Inquiry – why do you wish to repair me?" he questioned slowly, hesitantly and still so clearly nervous. His nearly sightless optics made the motions of tracking the sounds of scanning equipment, and following lights in any direction he could. He was outwardly calm and surprising compliant, but the subtle signs of his still present and growing anxiety could not slip by a well experienced medic unnoticed.

"You are a fellow Cybertronian, Soundwave," Ratchet answered slowly, after a moment to consider his words. All the while he typed commands into a computer console he had moved near him on top of the portable work table it sat on. Transferring copies of the scans into the computer, he labeled and saved the file along the many medical related files contained on a secure hard drive. "Whatever any one may have done, or believed in… whatever side they may have fought on during the war, no one could possibly deserve to have been damaged like you were. This ridiculous war for Cybertron is as good as over, and you are just as entitled to a future, a fair shot at starting over, as anyone."

Soundwave only nodded at that, appearing to accept the answer.

He was dismissed from the medbay some time later, after scans and assessment and some hope that he might ask more questions of his own - which he didn't. Ratchet had at some point, taken the face-shield from him, to set it down on the closest worktable. He retrieved it, and Soundwave immediately placed it back over his face-plate as soon as it was returned to him. He stood back on the floor, and the second he could, he turned around, made for the door and walked out of there with long and hurried strides. His arm was extended the whole time he had been moving again. And Laserbeak perched on it obediently as he walked, in order to be silently carried.

"If anyone is skilled enough to make the kind of repairs required here, surely you are," Knockout said. He turned the cart a little so that he could face the older bot, while they talked.

"Thank you for that vote of confidence," Ratchet answered with a decidedly nervous edge to his voice. He believed his proposed repair work was certainly doable – if he had not, he would never have bothered with the amount of considering he had already done, and he certainly would not have said a word about it, and dared to possible raise a patent's hopes. But at the same time he knew that to even try would be a complex and risky thing. There was no denying the number of things that could go wrong.

"It'll certainly take multiple repair sessions to fix him," Knockout considered. He flexed and unflexed the fingers of his right hand idly as he talked. And on his face-plate, Ratchet could not ignore the look of his still never quite forgotten passion, for medical science. "I'd assume your plan would be to devote the first repair session, to an attempt at restoring his vision?"

Ratchet nodded, and thought hard. "The visual input center is perfectly intact. He's capable of seeing, as far as his processor goes. The optics themselves, the connections directly behind them, everything is totaled to the point of being useless in sending any useful information to the processor. The light filter behind the right one is gone too… I'll need to replace the optics, the right filter, at least forty-two little connections. Hey, Knockout…?"

"Yes?" the red bod questioned after a second and after it was obvious the old medic's question had been allowed to die in the air.

"You didn't you mention to me that Soundwave was blind." Ratchet could still not fully believe that new revelation himself and sure the tone of his voice showed his shock over it. "Well blind without that face-shield of his anyway….yes. I'm still clueless about exactly how that bit of technology works exactly."

"I didn't know," Knockout insisted. He raised his good hand in front of him in a gesture of surrender. "Believe me when I say I was just as shocked as you surely must have been, when I realized he couldn't see. You said it yourself. He's only truly blind without the face-shield."

"I still don't understand how he could possibly have…" Ratchet stopped speaking, once again in the middle of a sentence. Stepping toward the computer, he called up the files he had just saved before closing down, and spent a minute going through the images that had been created by his scanner. He mumbled wordlessly and glanced around the room a second, before his attention went back to the images again. He wished then that he had bothered to take a decent look at the face-shield during the brief time he had held it in his hand. But he had still thought so little of it then and instead had set it down behind him without a second thought. Looking again yet again at the computer screen though, studying a 3D image with it's optics and visual hardware included, realization clicked in his processor, ad the old medic stepped back again toward his teammate.

"Oh, that's brilliant," he muttered out loud, while Knockout only shot a look of baffled confusion in his direction, and glanced cluelessly toward the image himself.

"A kind of set up involving a refracted data beam," Ratchet explained to his still baffled and curious colleague. With an extended fingertip, he tapped carefully on various parts of various images as he explained. "Soundwave's visual input center, at the front of the processor a ways behind the optics, is working perfectly fine of course. It just can't 'see' anything to input for processing. Now, if an outside device could see for him, capture moving images in real time, like a high speed video capture basically, and if that device could then beam what is sees, backwards right through the optics and directly onto the visual input..."

"He can see perfectly well by simply bypassing his own optics and using the face-shield among other things, like a real time camera," Knockout finished the thought, understanding now dawning. He shook his head in his own amazement over it.

"He hid it so well for centuries from the entire Decepticon army," the red bot reflected. His tone was clearly sad, and the old medic knew he was clearly faced once again with his own remorse at his own part in whatever it was he was getting at. "If that had only gotten out, if word had spread on the warship, that the faultless and brilliant communication and surveillance officer was in fact blinded by the event that had destroyed his face… Blindness is far too great a fault and a handicap. Probably a little worse even than mine would have been considered. He would never have been allowed to live another hour."

"Are you alright, Knockout?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Just… just give me a second."

"Alright."

"You've heard rumors, I suppose, of the 'cons many excuses for medics over the years I would imagine," Knockout said after a moment of sitting quietly on the cart and thinking. He'd been so clearly shaken up by all of his understanding and reflections. But the look of sinking dread and horror was quickly fading again from his face-plate and his crimson optics.

"Sparkless and generally sadistic bots as a rule," Ratchet nodded very slowly while he visibly cringed and let his look of disgust clearly show. "I know all too well the stories of batched and barely viable patch up job excuses for completed repairs, on bots who there were lucky to not have off lined with their idiocy and lack of any technique or ever proper training."

The old medic cringed again at his own words, before he glanced sadly in Knockout's direction. He remembered well a time when he would have assumed the very same of the young bot that was now his colleague and teammate. Knockout though, as he had quickly learned once, had been a surprising exception to that alarming statistic. He'd been good at a job that no 'con generally wanted – had done it by choice, instead of being shoved into the role after being yanked forcefully away from science and experimentation and made to fill a medic role without truly understanding that living bots were not simply new experiments. If only the Autobots had possibly found and recruited him first…

"Most of the medics that served the needs of the common bots in Kaon, way back at the very start of the war, were little better than those drafted by Megatron for the 'cons, or so I've often heard," Knockout said. His tone was both serious and once again regretful. "Many of them were the very same bots, as of course that was the first city to be drafted from. In order to have even survived injuries as horrific as Soundwave's would have have have been, he would have been thrown to the mercy of those depraved bot-butchers. I assume you were trying to ask me if that's why he's clearly beyond nervous of medics and accepting any real help? You're sure to have a real job on your hands with that one."

"I'll keep all of that in mind when and if he decides to submit to repairs at all. He may or may not, and I know that of course."

After a moment, Knockout turned the cart in the direction of the door, and moved to roll out of the medbay. Halfway to the door though he stopped, and sat where he was for a moment. Finally he turned back around to face the old medic again.

"Thank you for allowing me an opinion on this case," he said thoughtfully. "it means a lot to be able to still have a part, however small, in the medical field."

"You're still a fellow medic," Ratchet answered at once, with a confidant look of assurance at the disabled bot seated on the mobility cart. "You were good at your job, and you still know your stuff. I meant what I said, when I told Soundwave I value your medical opinions."

"It still means a lot. Say, Arcee had some news for me last night. It would have to have been you that saw her and gave her some scan results..."

"I scan a lot of bots for a lot of reasons, on a nearly daily basis," Ratchet answered, smiling only slightly and choosing to feign cluelessness as to what his teammate was talking about.

"She is carrying," Knockout blurted then. He rolled himself forward again on the cart and moved back toward the old bot. His face-plate, the look on which had been one of professional seriousness as he consulted on and discussed a patient case, gave way suddenly to a bright grin. He shook his head a little, probably still in near disbelief. But the grin, once present, stayed planted on his face-plate. "You knew, because of course you gave her the news. But you never said a thing about it it."

The old bot shrugged slight and gave a small chuckle of laughter. "Ha. It was hardly my place to go saying a thing. But my well wishes and congratulations to the both of you. Has it really hit home yet?"

"Honesty no. Well yes, to a point I suppose. She and I were out of recharge much of last night, just talking, planning, wondering. I would imagine by sometime next week, I'll realize its really true, and maybe then I'll have a good panic attack or something. Hmm, she may just do the same I would guess. It is it now though were are both just happy and laughing maybe too much."

"You're whole lives will be so different soon."

"I know. Well I think I know… I can imagine it anyway."

"A young one is never a bad thing. Each one is a blessing from Primus. But of course you surely agree with that. It's wonderful to have started to see little ones coming back home again. Even more so to think that soon a brand new one will exist, and one born on our own home world. There are so few of us left anywhere… Never let anyone tell you you can't do it, that you shouldn't, that you and Arcee were wrong..."

"Thank you."

"How would you feel about going to the oil pool again this evening? Doing another rehabilitation session in there? Floating in the pool is doing you some real good, I think."

Knockout only nodded his agreement in reply, and went on grinning mostly to himself before he turned to roll out of the medbay.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Arcee let the doors to the blaster range slid shut behind her **,** and walked immediately to the rack in front to the closet wall, to pick up a targeting blaster. Turning toward the control board, intending to set up her targeting patterns, she instead saw bumblebee already busy with the control board, and obviously having already started his own practice. Seeing her enter, he held his blaster in one hand at his side and nodded a friendly greeting.

"Hey 'Bee." Arcee read some shooting stats on the monitor screen over her teammates shoulder. "Ooh, looks like someone's got a new top rank in here. Who the frag is shooting 99.9 percent accuracy?"

The score had been record by the system simply under the designation of 'unregistered participant.' But whoever it was, Arcee had to admit it was impriessive.

"Soundwave," 'Bee answered. "I told him more than once, if he's going to use blaster range, which of course is fine, we'd prefer he register his name in the system. But no such luck so far."

"He's good. Always was pretty slagging scary on a battle field."

"Yeah. Just kinda too bad he was on the wrong side of the battles..."

"It is what it is 'Bee," Arcee shrugged, and leaned lightly against the wall behind her. "I never thought I'd live to see the day Soundwave, of any bot, would defect. I offered him the choice myself. But even then I didn't think he'd take it, even with a price on his metal at the hands of his own… You waiting for a challenger, 'Bee?"

Arcee held up her blaster with a slight laugh. "Best two of three?"

She would have expected that he would simply hit the 'go' button on the panel, and accept her challenge without a word about it. But instead her gave a funny look she had never seen before on his face-plate and looked her over with clearly mild concern.

"What?" she demanded laughing slightly as she stepped away from the wall.

"Should you still be target shooting?" he questioned in a voice that made her roll her optics at him. "I mean… I heard you're…."

"How'd you hear?" Arcee asked back. She laughed again, just a little. 'Bee was now the third bot in two days to comment in some manner or other on her 'status.'

"Knockout," Bumblebee said quickly, and with a grin. "He was so excited to tell me and Smokey this morning at the energon dispenser.

Arcee only laughed again at that, and rolled her optics again at her friend and teammate. "I may be a carrying bot, yeah. But that hardly means I can't shoot a blaster." 'Bee was going to be a medibot, and she really thought in that moment he should certainly have known better.

"Arcee, what's it really like to have a bondmate?" 'Bee's question made her blink a couple of times in baffled shock. But she remembered a second later, that the small black and yellow bot really was still barely an adult himself. He may have achieved so much as an Autobot solider, but still, behind that was still only the innocence and curious wonder of youth.

"It's…." Arcee began, but she stopped almost speaking almost immediately so that she could sit herself down and the floor of the range. 'Bee followed suit at once and joined her sitting on the thinly padded floor. "It's a difficult thing to really explain. Your bondmate is your best friend, the one bot that truly knows you as well as you know yourself. Hmmm, maybe better even. Theyy're the one who will always call it exactly how they see it, tell you the truth even when no one else will and you still try to lie to yourself. But its never in judgment and anger. They're always the one you hurry back to at the end of the day and you go back because you want to and because you need to see them again, because you miss them already five minutes after you left."

"Sounds like it would be a wonderful life. Challenging at times maybe, but still pretty amazing too."

"It is," Arcee answered grinning. She considered a second and then said honestly, "I suppose for some it would be more of a challenge than others. "For me it's probably far more so, only because Knockout is still so badly disabled. He needs so much help and everything takes so much extra time, consideration, planning. Then his emotions are so up and down. He'll be laughing his head off five minutes after crying his spark out and not even knowing exactly why… But I wouldn't trade it all for anything. I'd be lost without him now."

"If someone had told any one of us on this base that you and Knockout of all bots, would end up together..." 'Bee shook his head a little and gave a slight laugh, before his expression turned more serious again. "It was the two of you though that showed me how real love can still happen on our world… how no matter how much craziness and tragedy the war threw at us, sparks meant to find each other will still find a way..."

"Someday you will find your 'someone' too 'Bee. Yeah, I can't explain exactly how you'll know. I would assume that might have been your next question. You'll just know I suppose when the time is right to figure it out and realize it..."

"I think I already have."

"Speedbreaker?" Arcee questioned, with a look of understanding in his direction. And 'Bee just nodded slowly at first.

"Her creators are a shopkeeper and a maintenance bot, and her family is dedicated natural. Neither of her creators exactly loves the idea of her getting so close to a bot that holds a faction. Either one would have been equally bad for her, in their processors. But still she comes to see me whenever she can. We just talk and talk and talk about anything at all, and we have so much fun together. We've probably told each other things about ourselves, our lives, that no other bot will ever know… Last night she comm'd me just to say she missed me while stuck working her in carrier's shop all evening. I grabbed the call in under a second only because I already had a commlink open so I could tell her I missed her too."

Still sitting on the floor on the blaster ranger, Arcee only nodded her head in wordless understanding, before she laughed again and thumped her hand against in shoulder panel in a gesture of friendship.

Things were changing so fast, and Arcee knew that. Soon she would have her very own child and though she would once never had even thought of such a thing, she could only admit now it was both amazing and exciting to wonder who it become someday. The energy she had not so long ago put into constant battles in a war that never truly saw any real winner, had so many more constructive outlets. And now it so clearly looked like the bot she practically considered a younger brother, might just soon be dreaming of his own little apartment, a bondmate and hopes of a youngling of his own.

"Best two out of three' Bee?" Arcee said, repeating her earlier challenge she she stood up quickly and gestured with the targetting blaster she still held in her hand. As wonderful as change was, in that moment it was still wonderful just to forget to think of the future and only living in the same familiar moment. "Even carrying, I'm pretty sure I can still nearly kick your tail pipe!"

 **Notes/ well it looked from comments in reviews that a couple of you obviously wanted to see if Knockout and Arcee would have a little bot eventually. Ha, looks like now Im officially committed to really letting this fanfic project go on for longer because, obviously I decided** **to run with the idea.**

 **Also, hopefully Soundwave is not coming off as weak or ridiculous. I'm writing his character the way I'm doing it, because I feel like the mysterious and silent bot about whom really so little is known, must surely have a story too.**


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes/ Thanks a TON for the good amount of positive feedback I got for the previous chapter. It got me thinking, and still plotting more of this story, which is good.**

 **Clearly the idea of Soundwave pairing off now, is a popular suggestion. Ohhhhh boy. More subplot within a plot…? Its an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what, if anything, I want to do with that yet.**

 **MadnessJones – You're right about the Homicidal 'Con leader, that seems to have snuck right on out of the story. I'd noticed that too a couple chapters ago to be honest. But I just couldn't figure out exactly where Starscream had run off too. Ha, I finally caught him so I could stick him back into the plot where he belongs. And he makes a brief appearance again in this chapter.**

After a while of searching every obvious place on the Autobot base, and then having moved on to some of the slightly less obvious, Soundwave finally managed to find Knockout in the metal storage locker of any and all places. Stepping into the place slowly, letting his form cast a large shadow across the floor as the sunlight outside caught him from behind, he looked around at high ceilings and wall mounted shelves which held bits and sheets and rods of metal of many sizes, shapes, and types. The red bot sat on his cart, pulled up to a work table with it's tray and armrest raised, and out of the way. His right hand sorted intently though a pile of bolts and screws, hinges and all manner of small metal scraps spread out on the surface of the table in front of him. The bucket from which the pieces had been dumped out, sat empty at the edge of the table.

Soundwave took a couple of steps forward and watched, with nearly fascinated interest, as Knockout grabbed with clumsy and not exactly coordinated finger tips, for a small red painted bolt, which he turned in his hand and then let fell discarded to the table top. Reaching next for a bent blue metal scrap, his fingers knocked it across the table instead of picking it up, but he only reached out, and tried again to grab it, failing twice before he finally did so. He held it up, and inspected it carefully, only to discard it and reach next for another similar piece. Fumbling fingers sent it sliding across the tabletop and over the edge, where it bounced onto the floor with a light tinging sound. Three small bolts followed, knocked aside in his too slowly try at catching the falling metal scarp, and each one landed with various little tings and rattles of their own.

"Suggestion – Magnetized stick," Soundwave said thoughtfully. It was only after the fact that he remembered to consider whether such advice, meant genuinely though it was, as helpful, may or may not have been seen as inappropriately singling out a disabled bot. But Knockout only nodded at the suggestion. His face-plate took on a hopeful look as he appeared to realize that may just work.

"Hmmm… I've never actually thought about that," he mused. His right hand gestured in the rough direction of where he must have thought the metal scrap landed somewhere to his left. "Soundwave, would you mind grabbing that for me?"

"Knockout – Happy?" Soundwave hesitantly formed a question after he had bent to retrieve the metal scrap.

"Sorry?" Knockout questioned in response, as he reached out to grab the scrap awkwardly with his right hand. His face-plate showed baffled confusion.

"Knockout – Happy?" Soundwave repeated. He knew he should have tried the question again some other way, using some other wording. But he didn't know how. A slight frustration began to surface at his lack of ability to fully communicate in a rare situation where he might truly have wanted to. And he forced it away quickly as he could.

"Happy?" Knockout said then, and it was clear he was more than willing to at least try to understand and answer the question. "Well sure I am. I know where you stand on the whole 'busted malfunctioning wreck of a bot should not have been saved' thing. I think you really do mean that for all the best and noble of reasons. But..."

"Soundwave – incorrect," Soundwave cut in, interrupting before his fellow defector could finish. Knockout looked quizzically in his direction.

"Assertion – that one should not exist without function and quality of life. Knockout – increasingly functional. Quality of life – presumably high, and life enjoyable."

Knockout only nodded his clear agreement and understanding, and gestured with both his optics with his functional hand for him to continue, clearly sensing quite correctly that there was more he wanted to say. Soundwave took a moment to carefully form his thoughts into a sentence that he could then speak out loud. But nothing he tried in his thoughts truly worked well as spoken language and he knew it. He tried again and still he know it would have made close to no sense if spoken out loud. Finally he gave up and simply stood where he was, silent and looking over the shoulder of the red bot, who, for all he had lost would surely still always have the wonderful gift of verbal communication that so many bots took for granted.

"You would have died at the hands of soldiers for the very faction and cause you helped to build, if anyone had ever known your optics had been destroyed," Knockout said slowly. Obviously he understood the point that Soundwave was not quite able to find the words to make, even without any real hint of what he had wanted to say. "You wonder, and probably wondered all along I would think, if maybe since you could learn to live a life the best way you could with what you had left, probably even manage to find some happiness and make it all worth it, perhaps I could just be doing the very same?"

Soundwave nodded slowly and bent to pick up the little bolts that had fallen onto the floor, and rolled a short distance in various directions. He set each one down carefully onto the work table and thought carefully about what he wanted to say next. He wanted to explain that he knew what it was like to be so close to offlining. That the memories of being shot down out of the sky still bothered him. And that he remembered still almost just as well, the day his face-plate was melted and his optics destroyed, and that that day had been the first he had truly thought his life was surely about to end. He wished he could explain that he tried not to think about any of that very much because if he did it was hard to stop again. But he lacked the verbal skills to really say any of that in a way that wold have made even a hint of sense at all. So instead he simply bent again to pick up the last of the tiny bolts from the floor.

"You know..." Knockout began speaking again and Soundwave dropped the tiny bolt onto the work table and stood listening, "Back on the warship, we all just thought you were weird. Creepy. Bordering somewhere near terrifying. Certainly completely unreachable in the way of friendship, or even a simple conversation in the hall. I've been thinking, maybe some of us should have tired harder. I wonder if anyone ever realized you had your own scrap to deal with, the same as anybot."

Soundwave only nodded slightly. He understood fully what it was the other bot was trying to get across. But he could not come close enough to finding the words for a sensible reply, and so once again he didn't try to.

"Inquiry – scraps?" he asked, having decided to simply charge the subject, redirecting it to something else in hopes he could piece together spoken words well enough in a subject far less emotionally complex.

The way he had said it was still not good enough he knew. Even when he tilted his head and wordlessly gestured toward the metal bits strewn over the table, he knew the question was far too vague. Still though he did not bother to add any greater explanation, and instead only continued to stand with his head tilted toward the scarps in question.

"I'm looking for bits to became part of a youngling's first frame," Knockout explained. Obviously he had understood the question, as it was. He reached carefully for a smooth and flat bit of shinning chrome, held it up a bit toward the light, and looked it over carefully. "Arcee told me last night about her home city and it's tradition of using all manner of metal scraps, re-cut and reshaped into decorative components, incorporated into the frames built for their younglings. These bits and pieces would have been mostly left over from the rebuilding efforts on this planet. Seems fitting I think to use a couple of these scraps in the frame."

"I'd normally be helping of course to build said frame," he continued after a moment. The red bot looked down then from the metal scrap still in his right hand and down toward his left hand, which rested in his lap, unable to rest as typical, on the control switch, given the now upright position of the cart's tray and arm rest. Soundwave saw clearly the look of momentary sad regret in Knockout's optics, before he smiled slightly and went right on speaking. "There's no way I could build a frame. Ratchet's taken on that project. Ha, he's recruited Bulkhead and Wheekjack to help him. Said those wreckers stand to learn to do more than, well, wreck things. But no way am I going to have no part at all in helping. I told them I'd find them bits and pieces."

"Knockout- news of impending creator status- unforeseen. Unexpected." Soundwave said. He was still trying his best at real conversation. And to find that he was beginning to enjoy using the skill, was pleasantly surprising.

The red bot only laughed once, loudly and with a little shake of his head, as he set aside the shinny chrome bit and then immediately, clearly as an afterthought picked it back up again. "Ha! You're telling me."

"Soundwave- recently surprised in learning of bonded status between former Decepticon and Autobot."

Knockout only nodded in response to that, and gave what could only had been a slight smile of understanding, as he continued to sift and rummage through the pieces on the tabletop.

"Probability – offspring – kept highly shiny," Soundwave said, almost before he fully took the time to consider each word he spoke.

"Well, its like I told Arcee, when she recently made a very similar comment. Never underestimate the benefit of a well buffed and shinning paint-job. It's a very useful life skill..." The red bot rambled a second, still looking down at the scraps on the table, and chucking with laughter as he did so. Suddenly though she stopped in the meddle of what he had been saying, and turned to look at Soundwave, with a look on his face-plate that surely must have meant disbelief. "Soundwave… wait. Did you just make a joke?"

"Humor – attempted." Soundwave confirmed. Any hesitation he may have felt, had he taken the time to consider what it was he had done at all before he had done it, would have faded in a second anyway, because knockout's laughter told him his try was indeed successful. Behind his face-shield, he smiled.

Laserbeak had spent the entire morning docked with him, riding mounted to his front panel. And finally after longer than was typical, she projected to him, her restless urgency to undock and move independently. Considering a second he sent her permission to disengage and immediately sensed her disconnection from his docking port as she did so. Soundwave extended an arm slowly and with well trained obedience and loyally she moved to perch on it as soon as she was free of the docking port.

"Morning," Knockout mumbled, with his head tipped down again toward the table full of metal scraps, and his optics glancing partly to the side so that, while he paid obvious attention to more than once thing at a time. Soundwave stared at him, baffled for a moment, knocking full well the other bot could not see his baffled looked behind the face-shield in any case. A second later though he inwardly laughed when he realized the red bot had been addressing the bird.

He knew well that among Decepticons, Laserbeak was most often assumed to be a simple sparkless machine, an advanced weapon that he controlled through means they never had quite worked out. But Autobots had always somehow had the sense to see that she was a living bot herself. Laserbeak had no real voice. She was incapable of any sound beyond simple chirps and beeps and buzzing whirs. But still, once in a while an Autobot would talk to her anyway. And now Knockout had clearly thought to do the same. Soundwave was not sure exactly how he felt about a team of bots that spoke to his symbiont as her own separate individual. On the warship she had learned to play the role of simple machine without free will, because the circumstances made that arraignment useful. And it was certainly safest that way.

But among Autobots it so clearly was never going to work like that. They saw her as a living bot, because they were just open minded enough to realize her independence. They had realized it quickly and seemingly without any any real thought or question about it. And Laserbeak, once so willing to play that role of simple machine, was coming to enjoy the attention and acknowledgment of her individuality. Soundwave watched her now as she sat still perched obediently on his lower left arm, turned to head to the side and whirred happily at Knockout, who had just spoken to her.

"Knockout – hold Laserbeak," Soundwave said slowly.

When the red bot looked up from his sorting and gave a look of surprised confusion over it, Soundwave spoke up again, trying hard to explain his logic, by using language in the best way he could. "Requirement based upon new circumstances – to make her used to proximity to bots aside from myself."

He watched a moment as Knockout nodding slightly, reached somewhat awkwardly to his left using his right hand, so that he could grab the carts tray, and therefore also its attached hand control. He pulled it down to drop against it's latch mechanism on the side of the cart. Then, still using only the right hand and arm, he tried with some obvious trouble to move the left hand up and onto the control switch. Twice he managed to bang the left wrist again the bottom of the tray and once he hit the right finger tips off it, during a tired try at maneuvering a barely functional limb, held in another one that was still clumsy and uncoordinated. Soundwave spoke out loud again after that, offering in simple words to help him. But Knockout only shook his head with determination in his optics and on the forth try he did what he had obviously been trying to do in the first place. And Soundwave knew he had done that before. Clearly he knew how to do it and likely he had worked that out for himself, just as he himself had worked out how to do so much, when failure to succeed at the near impossible and fast, would only have meant the end. The bot stood still and watched his fellow defector turn the mobility cart slowly to face him, and once again he felt a sense of true regret for so recently stating out loud that that follow bot would have been better off dead.

As soon as he had given her the okay to do so, Laserbeak left her perched position on Soundwave's arm at once, and with a flapping of wings, she flew the short distance straight toward the red bot. Soundwave watched for a fraction of a second, dismayed when he saw her land right onto the back of the disabled bot's very defective left wrist, where he had been sure she would land on the right, which was so clearly stronger – a fact that she herself knew perfectly well. But after another second, he laughed inwardly, without making a sound, as he watched the red bot move to carefully pat the little bird's head with the right hand, that she of course had deliberately left free for exactly that reason.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

The previous few months had, from Starscream's perspective, been a series of endless trouble and catastrophes. It only seemed to get worse and worse everyday, and no amount of screaming into the lower atmosphere, as he stood alone on the flight deck, seemed to do anything to relieve his ever building rage.

And so it happened that one day, in the early evening, he found himself in Shockwave's laboratory, slumped against a cabinet, carelessly spilling part of a container of high grade energon onto the floor. Shockwave stood in the farthest corner, back to the room, while he sorted chemical samples in little containers, and willfully ignored his commander's unending rant.

"I can't possibly be expected to believe that we are all that's left of the Decepticons anywhere on or off Cybtertron. Well, ourselves, plus seven troopers. How can we possibly be entirely without a remaining crew and down to only seven troopers. We were the force in the universe to be feared the most, and that wasn't so long ago. It makes no real sense that we should find ourselves in this position at all. Yes, the Autobots may have almost had us. But if Megatron, hadn't gone all compassion and peace and just flown off without another word, and never to return, we could have made a come back, and good."

"The computer systems are fragging shot!" Starscream continued to rant, as Shockwave continued to all but ignore him. He poured himself another drink, from the bottle he'd left sitting on top of an out of the way workable. "Practically everything on this ship is run by that computer, and all the thing is doing is causing ship wide glitches. The power is surging, the doors are jamming up, communication and navigation are down. Our top four decks had lost any access to the server entirely, and have been pitch dark and freezing cold for I don't even know how long now! Of course none of this seems to concern you in the least, Shockwave. Your laboratory here is on a lower deck and you have a back up power generator. Perhaps if you can tear yourself away from useless science that is seemingly doing nothing to help the cause at this time, you could find it in your spark to make your way up the control room in order to look at, and fix that computer."

Shockwave had apparently grown tired of the ranting. Because he finally turned around to face Starscream, and at the same time he took a couple of long and heavy strides toward him. His large frame took on a stiff and tense stance and his hands clenched into fists.

"My specialization is in advanced genetic science," he said, in a tone that was far too calm for the tension in his body. "Not in computer systems. The only one that might have been able to fix that mess of a system you've got on board is Soundwave. And he would more than likely still be here today, working for our side, if you had not decided it was a good idea to attempt to assassinate him."

A sudden power surge made the lights flicker and dim, before they went out altogether. A back up generator kicked on then and the lights came back on, until a second later the ships main power returned took over again, kicking off the generator, with a loud buzzer whir. Somewhere down the closest hallway, a sliding door opened and shut itself loudly several times. And in the other direction, a heavy clicking thump indicated that some other door's locks had been triggered, by the computer.

"Frag this glitching!" Starscream bellowed. He stopped a foot against the floor like a youngling, and glared at his second in command. "Shockwave, we need to do something. It's getting worse."

"We need to land the ship," Shockwave answered logically, a little too calm for his commander's liking.

"No!" Starscream bellowed. "Nemesis has not landed sense we got it back into the air and it's not landing now. Its a warship, you idiot. It's built for airborne defense and attack. We're safe in the sky. It's useless on the ground."

"Starscream, use your logic for a moment.."

"I had to do it," Starscream declared. Almost immediately he forgot all about the problematic computer systems and instead went off on a new tangent. "That blasted Soundwave spied on me for centuries. I would have gotten so much further ahead in so many ways if that perfect little 'can do no wrong' tail-pipe kissing hack job of a bot, hadn't spent his time constantly reporting me at every turn! And what did you expect? That Soundwave would have sat humbly by, content to be my own third in command forever. Of course not. That creepy silent demon-bot was planning all along to get rid of you and me both, so that he could lead."

"Your hypothesis is entirely illogical. Soundwave clearly had no interest whatsoever in leadership of any kind. He would never have overthrown either one of us and taken our positions. In fact, it's pretty clear that one of the few things he ever truly feared was that one day leadership would fall to him and he would have no options to refuse."

"I don't buy that for a second. Didn't want my position? Of course he did. I daresay the mute wiedro was probably inspired by my own rise to the top. He thought that if I could do it, he obviously could to. And do we even want to know how he probably glared at me, at both of us, in contempt, wishing death upon us both, behind that face cover of his. Someone had to finally shoot him..."

"Starscream. You are intoxicated."

"I am not!" Starscream snapped. But then he finished the drink and processed to pour another, the forth the poured that evening. He shrugged, and huffed and shook his head a little, before he mumbled, "well perhaps. Ha, so what if I am!"

Shockwave turned his attention once again back to his task, stepped back toward his worktable, and went right back to ignoring his colleague. Starscream huffed and grumbled and then finally he just thew both of his arms up in annoyed frustration. Finally he took a step forward with a look of decision on his face-plate and took another drink from his container.

"Well," he snapped at Shockwave, who warily turned back to face him again. "Don't just stand there…. Sciencing all over everything. Go and bring Soundwave back to us!"

"And how do you propose I do that?" Shockwave was clearly far from impressed with his latest order. "He survived your attack on him yes. His life signal was of course still online and had grown strong again, the last I was able to see before the tracking computer went down. Logical to assume he was rescued by Autobots, but that tells us nothing of his location at present."

"Has it ever for one second occurred to you, Shockwave… ask the Autobots! Demand information and the return of my communications officer!"

"That could only prove unwise. We find ourselves successful in reacquiring Soundwave, and then what? He will only fight to and kill you if he feels he has to, in order to save himself from further tries at his own life. You tired to kill him Starscream. You brought him down with little more than pure luck and good timing. You'll never manage to do it again. You might have nearly had him from the air, but he won't hesitate to kill you on the ground. Soundwave escaped and he's obvious decided to leave well enough alone instead of seeking revenge. I advise against letting your stubbornness stand in the way of good sense. Besides, he's already made it perfectly clear through is previous actions, that he will not follow you."

"So, what's he going to do then?" Starscream spat, as he finished he drink faster than he probably should have. "Join the Autobots? Soundwave would never… He's nothing like that treacherous Knockout. But then, that finish obsessed lunatic is now dysfunctional and I can only assume a step away from death, so at least we can enjoy a good laugh at his fate."

"Actually," Shockwave interrupted, turning around again to face his commander, "According to intel from Soundwave, the last he acquired before you decided to try to kill him, it would seem Knockout is getting better."

"What?" Starscream's frame tensed under his rage. He had wanted news of the defector's death, not words implying his improving health.

"Did you not bother to read Soundwave's reports? As it is, Knockout will likely never walk, never regain full use of his left arm and hand. But he is otherwise surprisingly functional. He's loyal to the Autobots. Of course he would be. His bondmate is an Autobot..."

At that news, Starscream was compelled to hurl his empty energon container across the room. It missed Shockwave by inches and shattered against the worktable behind him.

"A bondmate?" he roared, with clenched fists and a scowl of fury across his face-plate. "Do you not think, Shockwave, that this information might just have been useful to me before now. Who is it? Who is it that that self centered, mouthy, pile of living ego, could learn to love as much as himself? Which of those ridiculous Autobots could possibly devote themselves to a busted junk heap!"

"Soundwave had reason to believe it's the Autobot called Arcee."

"Now why in the name if Primus would she of any bot want to… Nevermind. Capture her! Lock her up. Tie her up! Slowly disassemble her and send a delivery of a couple of non-vital parts to that defector medic! I don't care what you do exactly. But somehow we should be able to use her as bait to convince Knockout to come back. If he truly loves that Autobot..."

"Excuse my confusion. But it was my understanding that we urgently needed to recapture Soundwave. Why now the reignited interest in Knockout?"

"In the end we'll get them both somehow, you lunkhead. Perhaps executing Knockout will allow me to clear my head enough to work out exactly how to then get Soundwave. Perhaps..."

"It's over Starscream."

At that, Starscream stopped his raging and stared his second in the face-plate, momentarily sputtering uselessly.

"Over? What do you mean over? What's over."

"The war is over. We've lost. There's no hope of making a comeback."

"Bah. It's over when I say its over. And it's not over."

"The Decepticons are finished. We are only war criminals now in the optics of the Autobots who are rebuilding the world to run it themselves. They are showing mercy to any that forsake their 'con alliance, providing a new start to any that..."

Shockwave was by far that larger of the two, and Starscream was more than a little intoxicated on high grade. But neither of these things stopped him from crossing the floor in three long steps before leaping clear from the floor, and lunging at Shackwave while screaming with rage. Caught off guard, the force was just enough to send the larger 'con crashing to the floor, and against his work table, knocking it over with a crash and the spilling of dangerous chemicals, as the lights flashed and flickered again.

"No!" Starscream shrieked with fury. "We are not defecting. This is my ship now. My cause. My army to lead!"

"There's nothing to lead anymore." Shockwave shoved his commanding officer off of him with one simple motion of his hand and stood up, as the smaller bot sat on the floor, now sputtering again incoherently. "My loyalty was to Megatron, and he's left us behind. Left you. Walked away from the spoiled child he should have killed for the sake of our planet. He turned his back on a cause he knew had gone corrupt, and he found a new path. I will prove my loyalty now, but following his example and walking away from this."

"We are not defecting!" Starscream bellowed. He tried to jump up from the floor, bent on attacking again, without a care for what might just happen to him by that point, if they larger bot were to grow tired of it and fight back. But instead he only stumbled drunkenly and fell back to the floor, resting on this wings and bent elbows, scrambling to make uncoordinated long legs cooperate with his efforts to stand up.

"It isn't even technically defecting," Shockwave said, stepping slowly toward the door. "Not where there is no longer a side left to defect from."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"Energon pressure is just a little high," Ratchet said, as he unfastened a portable monitoring cuff from Arcee's arm. "That's quite normal though while carrying."

"Is that… safe?" Arcee questioned at once. The slight tone of alarm and fretting in her voice was a little too clear, but Ratchet only chuckled a little about it all. He had seen more than enough first time carriers in the early days of his medical practice, to only be reminded now of just how nervous they always tended to be over every tiny aspect of their health.

"Perfectly safe," he answered in assurance. "We'll keep an optic on it obviously, if for no other reason than your own piece of mind, but I'm not worried in the least."

He reached behind him for his trusted old handheld scanner, and after taking a moment to push buttons on it's small keypad and adjust its function settings, he placed it lightly against the armor plating that covered and protected Arcee's spark chamber.

"The newspark will have it's own spark pulse by now," he said, smiling slightly as he moved the monitor a little. "Listen."

Acree had of course heard the sound of her own spark pulse many times before. Once again hearing the low tone of her spark as it pulsed, cycling slowly with it's energetic whirring was nothing impressive at all. But the sound she heard running along with it, overlapping it's pulses at the far faster rate, made her optics open wide in shocked amazement. The far higher pitch it emitted over the monitor, made it easy to picture just how fast the tiny helpless spark spun constantly around her own.

 _"_ _The_ _constant rotation of a newspark,_ _around it's own carrier's generates it's energy field, providing it the needed power to keep on building itself and growing larger and stronger"_

Ratchet had explained that once, about a month before. And Arcee had been fastened then by the idea and the knowledge of it. But to hear the sound of it, to finally visualize exactly what it was he had meant based only on the pulsing nose that motion produced withing her own frame... it was different now.

Knockout, sitting on his cart, parked facing her as she sat on a repair table in the medbay, grinned just as wide and brightly as his mate, as he too listened to the high and steady pulsing sound. He understood the medical science of it obviously far better than she ever could. But to know that the speak pulse he heard was that his own child, was a different feeling entirely. And with his functional hand holding tightly to hers over the tray of the cart, he just went right on grinning.

"Ratchet, is it possible to tell the gender of a newspark before it's born?" Arcee questioned, curious.

"Sure," the old medic nodded. "If I were to just tune this monitor a little bit, I should be able to pick up on a gender signature for the little one. It should be far enough along now to know for certain. Would you like to know?"

Arcee had asked, only out of slight curiosity about the whole process really. But when faced with the question of weather or not she wanted to know what she was carrying, she realized she had never even thought about it at all. She looked from the old medic back to her mate and saw that he only continued to grin at her like a youngling wired on too many energon sweets.

"Do you want to know?" She asked him smiling.

Knockout was silent for a moment as he considered. Finally he answered with certainty, "I think I do."

"I do too," Arcee decided. Her learned general dislike of surprises, made her sure.

"How is the younging frame looking?" she asked after a second, and making conversation mostly to keep herself from bouncing with the excitement of soon learning more about the child she carried.

"I do believe it's nearly done," Knockout smiled. He had been leaning forward a little on his seat, but finally learned back against the seat-back, as his frame began to tire and he had more trouble holding his balance. "It looked this morning, like Ratchet had both of the wreckers hard at work on it."

"Indeed I did," the old medic chuckled. Holding his scanner in one hand, he used to other to work the keypad and then turn a small dial. He looked at both of the bonded pair with an almost far away look in his optics as he mumbled proudly, "it's been so long since I've worked on a youngling's first frame. So long since I've even seen a first frame."

"Let me see the frame," Arcee said. She looked at Knockout with wide begging optics, and giggled, and knew full well he would only shake his head. He had before… twice.

"Not a chance," he said then, as she knew he would. "I told you, I want you to be surprised by the finished frame."

"Surprises make me uneasy."

"Even good surprises?"

"Yes… well no… maybe."

"It'll be finished soon and ready to show you," Knockout said smiling his familiar bright grin. And she smiled right back with a playful shake of her head.

When Ratchet carefully held the scanner against her chest-plate again the pair feel silent at once and both again listened in fascination for another moment, to the pulsing of their child's spark.

"I'm reading a very definitely female energy signature," Ratchet said. He smiled up from looking closely at the monitor held in his hand.

"A girl," Arcee squealed with more than obvious delight once the old bot had put the monitor away and backed up so that she could move. "So few females survived the war!"

"She'll be the most well loved little one on Cybertron," Knockout promised. He let go of Arcee's hand so that could could place his instead over her spark chamber.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes/ This one is late… and short it would seem. I could have kept writing, but that would heave meant still longer to update, so short it is. Yeah, I guess I was just too undecided over what to do with this chapter exactly and therefore rewrote, took forever, reconsidered, started over again. Back on track now and I have a direction! Go me! Next chapter hopefully up soon**

"Hi Knockout! How've you been? Any better? How's Arcee? Bulk' says you might have more good news, and if I ask you might tell me!" Miko chattered at record speed over the comm system, and she barely took a breath between her rapid fire questions.

Knockout, near the far corner of Ratchet's workshop, could only laugh in amusement at the little human. He looked up to the wall mounted screen across the room, and watched as she grinned at him, while she wiggled and shifted while sitting on her brightly colored bed covers, obviously trying not to drop her computer.

"Ha. Well I think I may have clearly understood about a third of what you just said," the red bot chuckled, grinning at the monitor and its camera.

"Sorry." Miko said, laughing. Then speaking at a reasonable speed she asked again," How've you been?"

"I've been good. Very good in fact. More than that actually. Wonderful!"

When Miko laughed again at the bot's answer, Knockout carefully moved the cart, reversing it so that he could put slightly more distance between himself and the camera by backing as close to the wall as he could. For a second or two the little human only looked at him with her head tipped first slightly to one side and then the other, trying to understand what it was he had backed up to show her. Finally her eyes opened wider with realization, and the confusion on her face turned to a wide grin at her webcam.

"No more shoulder straps!" she exclaimed. Her excitement caused the volume of her voice to rise again. "You can sit up and balance now!"

"Yep."

"Not walking though yet…?" Miko's voice lowered again and suddenly she looked slightly sad, disappointed.

At first Knockout wanted to remind his human friend that he likely never would, that that hope was gone, for reasons of Cybertraonian physiology that she would never be able to make sense of, and he would never know exactly how to explain quite well enough. But she looked at him over her monitor, with a familiar look of childlike hope behind her sad eyes, and instead he only smiled again.

"Not yet," he said. "But I'll keep on trying… for you as well as Arcee and the youngling."

"Youngling?" Miko tipped her head just slightly to one side, thinking. "Like… a little baby transformer?"

"Basically, yes."

"So, Arcee is… pregnant?"

"Well in a manner of speaking, yes."

"That is so incredibly cool! You and Arcee are gonna be parents! Will I get to meet the baby when you come back to Earth one day to visit? Is he going to turn into a sports car too, or will he be a little motorbike?" Miko's second round of rapid questions ended abruptly, and her face took on a look of baffled confusion, before she questioned thoughtfully, "wait. You guys are made of metal. With wiring for nerves, super complex computer processors for brains… How can a cybtertronian be..."

When the little human's question died in the air unfinished, he filled in the blanks and quickly answered her anyway, with a slight laugh. "It's not exactly what you would consider a live baby, Miko. Arcee's body is only carrying the spark. We built a tiny body to contain it when it's ready to detach from her own spark."

"So… little bots are both born and built..."

"Exactly," Knockout said in response, surprised at the small human's open minded understanding, and acceptance of the matter. He himself smiled again in the direction of the camera mounted to the wall, double checking to determine the range of it's view. "Would you like to see the youngling frame, Miko?"

"Can I?" the little human's brown eyes lit up and opened wider with excitement again.

"Ratchet completed the final finishing touches this morning. Arcee will be done with her duty shift soon, and I can finally show her the frame. You can surprise her with me."

Knockout rolled the cart forward and then turned so that he could move toward a work table near the wall half way across the workshop. He parked alongside the worktable and reached forward with his functional hand to grab the corner of a metallic silver sheet that served as a protective cover for the youngling frame. Reaching over his cart's tray, he grabbed the corner, and then reversed the cart a ways, taking the sheet with him, pulling it off of the frame. For a moment he tried to fold it however messily and working one-handed, while it lay draped over the tray. When that didn't quite seem to work so well, he raised his left hand the little he could and grabbed the edge of the cover with still barely functional fingertips until he could hold the fabric with his left hand just well enough that could use the right to make a couple of quick, if not still entirely uneven folds.

The small metal frame that lay carefully placed, on top of the work table, would soon house the spark of his own child. But as it was at the moment it was of course only a lifeless and uninhabited miniature bot frame. He had seen the finished body before, just that morning. And he had looked in a lot on the process of building it over several days. But still, looking at it again, seeing it completed, he was just as impressed, and filled with excitement as he had been earlier.

"Why is the body such a plain gray color?" Miko questioned. She looked intently at the view over her monitor, observing the details of the small body, including it's dull gray color coated only in a thick layer of clear oil based protectant. "All of you are so… bright."

"The body will began to take on its colors, once it's inhabited by the spark."

"It looks like he's going to kinda look like you. But he'll look a bit like Arcee too."

Knockout nodded, still not able to stop his smiling. The features given to the little bot frame, had obviously been deliberate on the part of its builders. Ratchet had put a lot of great effort and detail into a near perfect copy of Knockout's headgear, with it's perfectly symmetrical points, and his over sized pointed ears. He'd crafted little back fins for the child, that served as a perfect match to Arcee's. Then there were two small and delicate little hands, two little feet, arms and legs that sat so clearly disproportionate to the body so as to appear cute and childlike.

"How big is he?" Miko questioned after another moment in which she had again looked at the frame, but could not exactly work out it's size, in comparison to the full sized cybertronian adult that sat oddly angled near it.

"She actually. And six feet, seven and around a couple hundred pounds."

"That's huge!"

"Not so much no," Knockout chuckled. "Not for cybertron. I'd be twenty-two feet tall, if I could stand up, remember. Arcee is sixteeen, five."

"Wait… a baby girl transformer? Whoa cool! About time we had another girl on team Prime!"

Knockout only laughed once again at Miko's over the top enthusiasm. But a moment later, he saw her face fall, as her smile left her.

"Miko?" he questioned, cautiously.

And the little human stared at the monitor with confusion written on her face, and tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

"You know how to do things," she explained as tears sudden fell down her cheeks. "You can drive that machine, and fold a sheet, and probably so much else. You're not helpless, or useless. And I wanted to say I was impressed with all that, but I know that would be just as bad as feeling sorry..."

"Oh," Knockout said, understanding at once. "Miko, I'm impressed everyday with myself and just how much I can do if I try. You know, sometimes it's fun to almost make a game of it in a way. But never feel sorry. I don't. Not anymore. I have a life just as good as I want to make it."

"Was the youngling that big news Bulk' said you may just have for me?" Miko asked after a second, switching gears quickly and smiling through sniffles. Knockout nodded happily.

Behind him, the door slid open, and he turned quickly to face Arcee, as she hurried into the workshop. He rolled the cart toward her and reached out with his right hand to take the one that she immediately extended toward him.

"Ratchet said I would probably find you in his workshop," she mused. "I guess he was right. "What are you doing in here?"

"Waiting for you to come and find me, so that I can show you our completed youngling frame." Knockout kept his tone deliberately playful and his expression proud and silly.

"It's finished!"

"Yep. As of this morning according to Ratchet."

"Hi Arcee," Miko said, waving at her webcam and smiling on the monitor.

"Miko!" The smaller blue bot exclaimed. "How are you?" She saw then the redness of her eyes, left over from her very brief bout of crying. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Miko said, right back to smiling now and meaning it.

Arcee, only a second later, ran across the room in only a couple of long paces, and was instantly busy admiring the youngling frame on the worktable.

"Knockout," she exclaimed. "She's beautiful. This is the cutest thing I've ever seen."

"You guys are going to be great parents," Miko said, watching over her monitor, as Arcee retrieved the metallic cover from the corner of the worktable, unfolded it and carefully covered up the frame once again.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

The Chrome Hubcap energon bar was not overly busy, but it was not exactly dead quiet either. Knockout sat, parked on his cart pulled up to a table in the far corner of the place, and with Arcee sitting close to him at the table. Both laughed loudly at the antics of some bot, a neutral, clearly overcharged on too much high grade. He had began to quite obnoxiously sing some old Cybertronian battle song, but he'd obviously forgotten most of the lyrics and instead chose to invent his own. The lyrics he created were dirty and downright inappropriate. But somehow it was also just a little too hilarious.

"Thank you for coming out tonight," Arcee said, leaning in closer to her mate. Unable to partake in high grade obviously due to her carrying status, she took a drink from her container of energon strongly flavored with cobalt and aluminum, and enjoyed that just as much.

"I like a night on the town as much as anybot," Knockout smiled. He gave a slight laugh as the drunken singing bot was finally tossed from the place by a large framed employee, a minute after he'd purged his tank into a decorative wall fountain. "And this is a decent little place… though slightly nicer before that bot decided to… uh, redecorate." The fingers of his left hand, resting near his hand controls, gestured slightly, with as much motion as they could, in the rough direction of the fountain across the bar.

Arcee shook her head with a look of disgust and disbelief and, and then finally chuckled her agreement. Her optics moved toward a dance floor in the middle of the place. She smiled, watching Bumblebee and Speedbreaker, who appeared to take turns copying each other's dance moves, while amid a small crowd of other bots, while a rhythmic dance club track placed.

"The frame really is beautiful, you know," she said quietly as she could over the volume of the music. She shifted slightly in her chair so that she could lean over to rest her head on his shoulder panel, while he sat on his cart.

"I'm glad you like it," Knockout answered back.

"I love it." Arcee raised a hand to her spark chamber, and mused out loud. "Do you think she'll like it?"

"I'm sure of it."

The music track had changed a moment ago to something far slower. and when looked again toward the dance floor, she saw 'Bee and Speedbreaker were trying hard to dance together to the much slower song.

"You were right about those two," she said, chuckling over the pair of young bots and their awkward tendency of repeatedly stepping on one another's feet.

"Oh I completely called it," Knockout laughed. He took a drink from his own container, set it back down carefully, and grinned as he held out his right hand to her. "Arcee, dance with me!"

She stared at him for a brief moment as though he had truly gone insane. But a second later she reached out to grab his extended hand as she jumped up from her chair, almost spilling her drink accidentally when her knee banged against the table in uncharacteristic clumsiness. She took his other hand, his barely functional one, with her left and carefully swung it back and forth roughly in time with the song, while he used his right to pull her toward him lightly and gently send her rocking backward again. He laughed, and she grinned a bright smile.

"I guess you really can dance with me," Arcee said, her mate's laughter causing her to laugh too.

"Yes."

"I love to watch you do… well, anything really. I just love that look of yours."

"Ha. What look would that be?"

"That laughing mischief in your optics right along with the triumphant little smirk that screams 'you'll never stop me now.'"

"Outgunned, outnumbered, all odds against us… an Autobot doesn't know how to surrender, to give up and lie down and die quietly. That look you speak of, I've seen much the same on you in battle." Knockout stopped his adapted idea of dancing, and instead used his right hand to gently pull her closer to him, swinging her body sideways slightly so that she came to lean against his right side. "I remember the day fought each other in a train tunnel once on Earth. You were strong and quick, beautiful and terrifying. That might have been the day I'd first known I could have loved you, if I hadn't been been so full of rage, so in love with myself and the loyalty I thought might just protect my tailpipe."

Arcee stayed quiet for a moment, looking at his optics as the two smiled at each other. Finally she gave a slight laugh, meant to hide her almost sad disbelief, and admitted slowly, "All I really wanted was to send you straight to the scrapyard that day."

"Save my own spark, and do my best to save my paint-job. Both were pressing priorities." Knockout smirked at her and reached for his energon container, which she quickly moved to retrieve and hand to him, when he found the reach awkward and nearly knocked it over instead of grabbing it. "That never stopped me from realizing you were beautiful though."

"You know… I saw that very same look of yours on the day you left the 'cons." Arcee smiled as she spoke, but Knockout only shook his head slightly with helpless confusion on his face-plate.

"I still barely remember that. I've tried to but… I just don't. The bots have filled in a few ridiculous blanks and even Miko back on Earth understands that winning team running joke however."

"The look on your face... it was priceless indeed. Looking back well in hindsight I see it was only meant to hide self doubt and the fear of the unknown. But at the moment I may have laughed out loud if I'd known then I really could trust you."

At that moment, Bumblebee and Speedbreaker came back to the table, and when they had once again sat down in their chairs, Arcee sat back on hers too.

"You've got some crazy moves, 'Bee," Speedy laughed. "Seriously what kind of dancing was that even supposed to be?"

"I might have picked up a couple things from a few little humans back on Earth," 'Bee answered, laughing back.

"Earth always sounded to me like it must have been such a neat and interesting place," Speedbreaker mused wistfully. Her expression became serious and yet somehow always dreamlike as she said, "an organic planet? I wouldn't have imagined such a thing was possible, and yet I've heard so much about it now, so clearly it is."

"No reason you'll never get to see it yourself actually, Speedy," Arcee said. She smiled confidently in the younger bot's direction. "Earth is our home away from home. We still have friends that want to see us again as soon as we can make it back. You could come with us. They'd love you!"

"My creator and carrier would each lose a few lug nuts!" Speedbreaker exclaimed, laughing.

"You're a grown bot, Speedy," Bumblebee said, grinning at her. "We're building our own lives together because we want to, and if you want to leave the planet, or anything else in life, well, they'll get over it."

"Ooh, such an impressive little rebellious side, 'Bee!" Knockout remarked. "Now, keep it up and you're really in business." He both laughed and grinned a little too much, until Arcee reached over and playfully smacked him lightly, before she burst out laughing herself.

"Please ignore him, Speedy," she said, still laughing as she grabbed the little orange and silver bot gently by one arm, and gestured lightly with her other hand toward Knockout. "He's an incredibly bad influence."

"You better believe it!" Knockout laughed, with his ever familiar smirk now across his face-plate.

"I'll grab all of us some more drinks," Arcee chuckled, standing up to do exactly that.

The Chrome Hubcap had begun to get busier, as it got later into the evening. And she found herself in the midst of a small crowd of bots, gathered at the bar, pushing against each other lightly and hollering opt drink orders as they gestured with waving hands, and pointing fingers. Arcee stumbled backward slightly, when a large bot who had already so clearly had slightly too much to drink backed up against her trying to balance his table's multiple drinks. Before she managed to catch herself and stand up straight again, she instead crashed lightly against a bot directly behind her.

"Pardon me," she said, turning to face whoever it was she had banged into.

"All good," the white and pale yellow fellow said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. His face-plate though showed a sudden look of recognition, just before Arcee turned back around, and with that he questioned, "how is your bondmate?"

"I'm sorry..." Arcee mumbled, clueless.

"I met the two of you once in a shop a while back. Understandable that you wouldn't remember me. You had your suddenly very sick mate to deal with."

"Right. Of course." Acree slowly returned his look of recognition, and she slowly smiled a little at the stranger, as she waved toward the table she had just left, and to her bondmate, who sat on his cart laughing with their teammates. "He's great now, as you can see."

"Ha, I see that," the white and yellow bot chuckled. "Sure looks like a confidant fellow."

"You have no idea. Our lives are certainly never boring. Hey… thank you again for the help that crazy day. He was completely fine when we went out to shop. It was his idea to go and pick up a few… it was all good when I left him for just a couple of moments..."

"Oh, no I completely understand that. A random reboot will usually just kind of happen out of nowhere. And a bot's still gotta live a life."

"Yeah. And now it can be a month between two of them, and then a couple days between the next five, so we just sort of.. " Arcee stopped speaking right in the middle of a sentence, as reasoning caught up with her speech. Her optics opened just slightly wider as she fully clued in to this stranger's implication. "You've seen and dealt with this before. That's how you knew exactly what to do with..."

"Sadly, yes." The strange bot paused a moment, his face-plate taking on a suddenly slightly sad expression. "My sister… she took a fall from an upper deck of a refugee ship years ago. Hit the floor levels below head first. Her only injury ended up being massive processor damage. I take care of her. I'm the only one she's got. But we've been dealing with reboots, among other things, since the accident."

"I'm sorry to hear..."

"Don't be sorry," the white and yellow stranger held a hand up and raised on finger, while beginning to smile a little. "Firestorm, my sister, would tell you to never be sorry. That it is what it is, and let's all stop with the pity and let her do things her way."

"She sounds just like Knockout," Arcee grinned. She gestured toward her table again, where her mate was still laughing almost hysterically over something that was not exactly clear, while Speedbreaker, shook her head, obviously confused, and Bumblebee just looked from one of them to the to the other helplessly.

"Those two have got to meet sometime," Arcee mused. She chuckled with a slight laugh at first, but quickly her expression turned serious as she suggested, "Let me meet her. I want to bring her to the Autobot base. Our medic... he's the best Cyberton has got. If anyone can do anything to help your sister..."

"You can certainly meet her, and I'd love to say hello to that mate of yours. My sister is waiting for me at our table. Perhaps your little group can join us over there. It's like I said… a bot's still gotta live a life, and does enjoy getting to go places… meeting everyone..."

Firestorm turned out to be a young bot, so clearly just barely into her adulthood. And small framed, lightweight, with a delicate and almost fragile body structure. She was pale yellow and simple white just the same as her brother, and grinned brightly despite the shaking of both her hands as she held a container up to drink from it with difficulty. When Knockout steered his cart into the empty space left for him between her and Arcee, the fragile almost-youngling stared up and him and down to his cart and back again in obvious amazed wonder.

Just the understanding and sense of knowing that it was not impoliteness, but instead only a kind of sheer amazement at seeing another bot, damaged like her and not offline as a result of Cybertron's endless history of killing the weak and broken, made Arcee wipe a tiny stream of coolant from one optic.

"Okay, here's the plan I think," Knockout said, quickly taking charge, while looking intently at the young bot he so clearly related to himself, and rolling the cart forward and back slightly as he spoke, more than likely only to show the curious young bot how it was he was able to drive it by himself. "We'll comm Ratchet in a moment. Let him know we are bringing in an unexpected non-emergency patient."

"Your vocalizer… better'en me… mine..." the little bot said, her own speech considerably jumbled and slow. Both of her arms and hands held awkwardly in front of her after she had put the container down, continued to constantly shake slightly.

"It would seem so," Knockout answered back. He smiled at the young bot, and instantly he showed the compassionate, calm and understanding nature that once might have been so easy to let go unnoticed. "You see though, the processor is a bit of a ridiculously funny thing. When one is damaged, it seems we never really know exactly what kind of mess it is we'll get. It's fully doubtful by now, I'll ever walk, whereas I think you can."

"Walknot good… run muchmuchworse. I tryitstill thouhg…" the little bot smiled so brightly again. So far it seemed she never stopped smiling.

It was perfectly clear as soon as the group of bots had gotten up and began to make their way out of the place intending to go right to the base, exactly what it was the little bot had been talking about when she had eluded to her own mobility issues. Getting up from her chair, she stumbled forward nearly falling to the floor with a clear lack of balance, before she caught herself by grabbing the chair back to stead herself before she began to walk forward with short and unsteady stumbling steps. He body rocked itself slightly from back to front and slightly less from side to side continuously in such obvious struggle to maintain an ever precarious sense of balance.

Once outside of the place though, she surprised the little group of Autobots with a retained ability to transform into a vehicle mode – a sleek and low riding white three wheeled Cybertronian road cruiser, with yellow doors and line work. The vehicle veered to the left than the right and back again horribly sbut she could certainly move faster and with far greater efficiently that way. Her brother only grinned at their surprise, before he dropped into his own nearly matching vehicle form, and hurried off after her down the road leading toward the base.


	30. Chapter 30

Standing in the medbay, near Ratchet's far corner work table, Bumblebee tapped the old medibot lightly on the side of his shoulder panel. It took a second, slightly harder tap, and speaking loudly, calling his name to get his attention, before the old bot finally turned around.

"I'm… Sorry 'Bee." Ratchet stood just leaning slightly forward with both of hands resting on the worktable he used for his scientific work, and where he had the second before been doing nothing at all but staring at the wall in front of him. "What did you need?"

"I'm just not sure I understand this study case, exactly." Bumblebee set a data pad he'd been holding in his hands, down on Ratchet's near empty work table. He'd left it open on an image that was included in the study material he'd been busily reading all morning.

"Alright," the old bot finally moved from the edge of his worktable, stepped back and turned a little. He spoke calmly as he said, "let's go over this."

"Thanks," 'Bee answered, while he looked down intently at his data pad.

"First things first. Explain to me what you believe it is you are looking at here." Ratchet gestured toward the picture on the data pad.

"It's clearly somebot's wrist joint in close up view. I think it's sustained blast damage."

"Nice job. Degree of injury severity?"

"Uhh… moderate to serious?"

Ratchet nodded, and gestured again to the image. "Something like this is potentially still fixable, or may require a complete replacement of the joint, and possibility it's wiring. Deciding on the best course of action can be a tricky thing really. Scans will show greater details and give far more information about the condition of the joint obviously. We base a decision from there on the length of time it will take to either repair or replace, whether we have suitable parts and materials in stock… If you were to decide on repairing damage like this, it would be very close to the kind of repair I did for Acree and her shattered ankle during our Earth visit."

The old bot fell silent then, and after another moment he slowly turned again to face toward the wall and his work table. He began to stare again at the blank white wall now in front of him.

"I've been thinking I might ask Knockout to work with you a bit on some medical theory and anatomy lessons on data pads. He still so desperately wants to remain in the medical field in some capacity. We both know he's mentally just as sharp as ever and I see his potential for fully throwing himself right back into his work however he can. This might just work out. A way for him to work again in his own field, and for you to study and learn and question."

'Bee nodded his agreement and understanding. He answered that he liked the idea. But the old medic gave no further response. It was clear he had not likely even heard him, or seen his nodding.

"Are you alright?" the young bot questioned, suddenly concerned when the medic appeared to stare off into nothing again.

"Ratchet!" he said, speaking louder and far more urgently, when the old bot still did not answer him.

Finally the old bot turned slowly to face him again, and stood with both of his hands on the front of his head while he shook off some obvious momentary confusion.

"I'm… sorry, Bumblebee," he muttered quietly. "I've… just been…. Distracted today it seems."

"You okay?"

"Yes, yes I'm fine. Just a bit… 'Bee I think you should understand a very important lesson."

"What lesson?"

"You can't save them all, 'Bee." Ratchet stood, still shaking his head, and looking down at the younger bot, with a strange sad look in his blue optics.

"Can't save them all? You are talking about patients? Sick and damaged bots?"

"Yes."

"I _know_ that," Bumblebee insisted, taken aback by his teammate's words and the look in his optics. "I've seen so many bots die on the battle field to know just how many can't be saved."

"You say you know and understand that, but do you really? Patients offline. It's a fact of life for a medibot. You call the time of death, and you hand the frame over to loved ones that come to say goodbye and to claim it. You tell them all just how sorry you are, how you did all you could do and you hope they understand that. Then you walk away to see to the next case, see to some other bot's strained or dislocated knee joint and you hope that he won't notice the emotions you're hiding behind a blank expression and intent focused optics and that he won't wonder if you lost your last patient."

Ratchet turned back to face the worktable and the wall yet again, and this time his optics looked down toward the top of the table. He continued on with his unexpected teaching by muttering in a strange tone of near defeat, "An offline bot is sad. Tragic. You blame yourself, and think that maybe if only you have done just a little more… maybe if you'd only tried just a little harder… But then are the ones that live. The ones that survive when all medical knowledge says that they shouldn't have. The bots left disabled, damaged and broken, making do with whatever it is they're left with, because you just don't know enough yet, because science just isn't there yet."

The old medic suddenly raised a hand, now balled up into a tight fist. And with an uncharacteristic amount of obvious anger, he slammed it down onto the work table. This was followed immediately by a kick of one large foot, against a front table leg, which promptly made the while thing wobble with the threat of falling right over.

"You mean bots like Firestorm?" Bumblebee asked with calm understanding despite the outburst of sudden rage. He hurried to steady the still lightly wobbling table with one hand.

"Firestorm… Knockout…," Ratchet mumbled quietly, and with his anger quickly gone, and replaced a look and tone of utter defeat. "I've got two bots now with damaged processors, disabled, rebooting, one is constantly stumbling, falling and can hardly talk, the other will probably never walk or regain full left arm function..."

"Ratchet," 'Bee said firmly. He lightly grabbed for the other bot's arm to make him turn and look at him again. "Knockout is doing so much now. I think sometimes he tries to do half the stuff he does just to see the looks on our faces when he gets it right and never should have been able to. He's truly an Autobot. Arcee loves him. And Firestorm never seems to stop smiling for more than a minute at a time. Last night when you had her walk the hallway, so you could make those assessments of her mobility and balance, sure she fell to the floor twice, after stumbling against the wall a few times. But she got up again as fast as she could, and even then I don't think I've seen too many bots ever smile that bright."

There was a small window mounted high up on one side wall of the medbay, left unshuttered and sitting open that day to let in the day's light breeze and bright sunlight. Bumblebee pulled Ratchet gently toward that open window, by the arm he was still holding lightly onto. The old bot grumbled under his intakes in protest, but still he walked with him willingly enough.

"Check this out for a minute," 'Bee said. He gave a little chuckle of laughter as he gestured pointedly to the window.

Outside, in a small securely fenced in courtyard on the other side of the window, Arcee was busy tossing a lightweight inflatable blue ball toward Knockout's outstretched hand, while he sat on his cart, now minus its tray, thanks to a recent modification to remount the hand control onto the left armrest. His one mostly functional arm reached up higher and his hand grabbed fast for the ball. Too slow and still lacking coordination, his fingertips light made contact with the tossed ball, and he sent it flying away from himself instead of catching it. With a clear frown of annoyance on his faceplate, he tipped his head down and shifted in his seat the bit he could do, looking to see where the ball had fallen. But when he raised his head and his optics again, he was actually laughing.

Firestorm, standing outside, close to the fence and out of the way, laughed a little too, because laughter really was catchy. The white and yellow bot leaned slightly forward against the bars of a walking frame that Ratchet had located in the medbay storage room for her to experiment with using. The walking frame was considerably bigger than it should have been for a bot of her size, but the medic had made up his mind the previous night to custom build a smaller one for her, if the temporary one proved helpful to her.

"Ready?" Arcee asked. She had run to quickly retrieve the ball and stood holding it and ready to throw again.

Knockout raised his arm again, with his optics focused on the blue ball. "Go!"

Ratchet, watching through the window, lowered his head just slightly and his own optics showed clear regret, when Knockout missed again, knocking the ball awkwardly away from him again, and sending it rolling and bouncing across the ground. But 'Bee only grinned instead, as he gestured to the bots outside.

"He's been doing great in his rehabilitation," the young bot said.

"He'll never be close to fully functional though, in any case," Ratchet protested, grumbling as he shook his head slightly in the direction of the window. "His medical career is as good as over and no amount of hard work on his part will ever change that."

"Well clearly I can't catch yet," Knockout exclaimed, still laughing a little. "Lemme throw it then."

"Catch it and you can throw it back," Arcee answered quickly with a smirk and a loud laugh of her own.

"Oh, come on..."

"Nope. Mine!" Arcee laughed. She held both hands, one of which of course contained the little blue ball, behind her back. And for no clear reason at all, other than because she could and because it was funny, she began to run backwards across the courtyard. She now laughed hysterically.

"You think I won't chase you?" Knockout said, grinning with silliness in his optics. His left hand had been resting on his lap. But he quickly managed to lift it with the right so that he could place it against his controls, and drive the cart forward. His right foot shoved the power pedal down toward the floor and he quickly reached near the speed of a bot's slow run, as he maneuvered around using his hand control, to pursue his mate as she began to run in unpredictable twists and sudden turns jokingly trying to lose him.

"Firestorm," Arcee yelled, "think fast!"

The little bot gave a momentary startled look, before Arcee gently tossed the ball at her, from a paused position close in front of her. Firestorm missed her catch just as sure as Knockout had been missing his. But leaning on her walking frame, holding onto one of its handholds with one hand, she was able to bend her knees and lower herself to pick it up from where it had landed near her feet. Her problem then was now that she was holding the ball, Knockout had quickly turned the cart around in as sharp of a turn possible, and was now pursuing her instead of his bondmate.

For a tiny fraction of a second, Firestorm's optics showed an intent and thinking look. Then she simply opened her storage compartment, tossed the ball in there with an ever shaking hand, and then with both hands once again free, she grabbed her handholds and walked as fast as she could across the courtyard balancing herself with the frame. She managed close to thirty feet before she stumbled a little, and held tighter to the frame, bracing against it to catch herself. Standing up straight and letting go of it she retrieved the ball from her compartment, and tossed it clumsily toward Arcee, who still managed to catch it despite the badly aimed toss. Arcee stepped closer to her mate, and lightly threw it back to him again from a shorter distance then she had before. He caught it, though just barely, and holding it for a moment, he looked up smiling at his own achievement.

Instead of throwing the ball back to Arcee though, Knockout turned the cart slightly again and tossed the ball gently to Firestorm, who leaned forward and reached with one shaky hand. She visibly struggled to hold her balance as she reached up and to the side, trying so hard to catch and missing anyway. But her nearly constant bright smile still never left her face-plate.

"That's so cool," Bumblebee exclaimed. He stayed standing beside the old medic, looking out the window, and now his optics lit up as he understand exactly what it was he was seeing outside. "Now Knockout is trying to start doing some rehab work with her, while he still practices his own too. I know it's been a while now since he's actually hated it. He doesn't seem to mind doing it anymore at all. And now they're both just having fun with it!"

But instead of nodding his pleased agreement, as the younger bot may have expected he would, or even chuckling a little about what he saw outside, Ratchet only huffed wordlessly, before he turned and walked away with heavy steps and a slowly shaking head, across the medbay.

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With one foot planted firmly on the floor, and his body maintaining well trained and perfect balance, Soundwave kicked his other leg forward fast, allowing his foot to connect squarely with the punching bag in front of him and hanging suspended from the ceiling. Two more repetitive kicks in rapid succession, and then he dropped his foot back onto the floor fast, found his balance on it without any conscious thought at all, and spun rapidly into a sideways kick with the other foot. Turning again to face another of the training gym's walls, he raised both arms bent at the elbows in front of him and shifted rapidly through many various angles and variations of his arm position, performing perfect and precise blocking moves just as though an opponent stood facing him.

He threw himself and his full attention into a practice in the maneuvers and motions of high level unarmed combat, and for a good while he he concentrated entirely on his patterns of spins, kicks, blocks and punches. The order of the moves, the number of repeated kicks in a row, or the direction of a spin was entirely improved, decided in the moment without truly deciding at all. But each separate and individual maneuver itself came from centuries of relentless practice, repetition and self discipline.

Time lost any real relevance, and to even wonder how much time had passed did not even begin to occur to him. Finally Soundwave sensed his body begining to slowly tire and he slowed his movements slightly and then a little more, deliberately allowing his intakes to slow and his frame and the wiring inside to cool down. Gradually he stopped altogether, and turned around in a full half circle in order to look toward the door and the outer wall of the gym, because the instinct that drove him to do so had finally caught up within his processor and caused him to turn and look. Instantly he was met with a bot staring intently and straight at him.

She was a tiny thing. Clearly classifiable under the category of 'minibot,' and well on the small side even for that bot class. And young, an adult obviously, but likely just barely so. Her coloring was mostly bright white and a fair amount of pale yellow, and she sat on the gym floor a ways from the door but close to the wall, behind a worn old walking frame that was clearly too big for her, and with her arms and hands steadily shaking.

Soundwave watched her through his face-shield, glaring at her as though he really could bore holes into her armor with only his staring gaze. He reasoned that the little bot would stand herself up as fast as she could and use that walking frame of hers to make for the door just as fast as possible. Another little bot of neutral status had been scared well away from him, while he did little more than move toward her. He hadn't meant to scare that one. But he hadn't exactly wanted her to stick around either. This new stranger was no different from the last – just unwanted company he would feel far better without. And he instantly returned her scare, through his face-shield, waiting for her to grow uneasy and hurry away.

When she appeared to hesitate for just a second, he took one long step toward her. When she still didn't make a move to hurry away, he took another step. He wondered in that moment where it was exactly that Laserbeak had gone, because she should have alerted him to the presence of the little bot when she came in, but clearly somehow had not. Soundwave broke his gaze from the young bot for just a moment in order to glace to his right, toward a bench that sat in front of another of the gym walls. The little bird lay on the seat of the bench, flat on her back, wings stretched out to either side, clearly in recharge.

"Hiii," the young white and yellow bot said. Her speech was slow and slightly mumbled and slurred. And she raised one trembling hand to wave at him, while she continued to sit on the gym floor.

Silently, Soundwave spent a moment looking from her to Laserbeak, who remained in recharge, oblivious to whole thing, and back again. The little bot, he saw had followed his gaze toward the recharging bird, and was now smiling in her direction.

"Heis… bootafull..." the strange little bot said. And Soundwave, fully unsure by that point whether he should be frustrated and angry that he couldn't scare her away from him, or actually amused by the fact, took one more long step to stand even closer to her.

"Your… fightin' skill… isimpressiff..." The small bot struggled to her feet, and then finally placed her hands onto the handholds of the frame, obviously able to hold her balance far better that way. But still, instead of walking away out out the door, she only stood still, looking up at him.

Clearly unable to intimidate her into retreating, ever after he took one more finally step toward her and stood staring down and looming over her, motionless, Soundwave instead turned around to face the other direction and he walked away, halfway back to the middle of the gym. For a couple of long moments he stood, looking at a blank wall and the doors that lead to the blaster range behind it. Though he did not physical move, inwardly he shook his head, baffled, curious, annoyed and confused all at once. When he finally turned slowly back around again, the same little bot was still standing near the wall, leaning a little against her walking frame, with a smile on her face-plate.

"Yu mussbe… Soundwave." The little bot just stayed standing still. And she looked up and toward him with calm and curious shining blue optics. "ever...one saysyu cameformda… figthin'pits. That how yulearned yamooves?"

"I hearya can talk..." the little white and yellow bot said, as Soundwave walked fast toward the door himself, deciding to simply return to his small living quarters, and just before he was able to get out. "Yu muss speak, better'en meee. Everone does. I'd listenta yu, if yu wanna talktameee."

Soundwave made right for the door, still without a word. Laserbeak, finally sensing his urgency, snapped fast out of her recharge and immediately she flew to him, landed lightly on the arm he extended to her, and allowed herself to be hurriedly carried away from there.

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Knockout opened his optics, after snapping fast out of a light recharge without ever having noticed that he had dozed off at all. He was sitting up on his mobility cart, parked in an out of the way corner of the common room, with his head tilted back awkwardly against the cart's headrest. He slowly moved to slowly turn his head one way and then the other shrugging his shoulders as well as he could a couple of times and then turning his head again, trying to relieve the stiffness his awkward and unintended napping position had caused the wiring in his neck and shoulders.

When he looked around the room, as he wiggled to sit himself up straighter, and finally finally noticed Soundwave, seated on a bench across the otherwise empty room, he resisted the urge to groan lightly with embarrassment for his unplanned recharging. The other bot, as busy however intently looking over a datapad held in his hands, and Knockout wondered hopefully for a second if he even noticed he'd been asleep at all.

"Mobility machine – unlikely to be comfortable enough for recharging." Soundwave unexpectedly spoke up. And Knockout, entirely unable to be sure whether the comment was another try at humor or not, gave a slight laugh anyway.

"It isn't," he said, giving his head another slow turn and his shoulders another stretch. "Though I don't usually make a habit of recharging in it."

"I beleive I clearly pushed myself far too hard with rehabilitation work today," he went on, as he drove the cart toward the bench where his fellow defector sat.

He had, he knew, done exactly that. That morning there had been a session of working with Ratchet in the training gym on the lower level. And because he had felt particularly good that morning physically speaking, and in a good mood to push himself a little more, and because there was not a single waiting patient upstairs in the medbay, the old medic neither of the bots had been in any great rush to stop training, since it made sense that they keep working for a while. Then not long after, Arcee had randomly tossed a ball toward him in the courtyard outside, obviously having remembered that he once said I wanted to try to catch an object. The pair of them had mostly just been having fun, and goofing around and enjoying the sunshine. But still it was good and deliberate practice as well, and he certainly put some great effort into it.

"Inquiry – identity of one small bot? Description – yellow. White. Natural. Damaged."

"I'm sorry?" Soundwave's question was so out of the clear blue and without any clear context at all, that for a moment Knockout only looked in his direction mumbling his confusion. But a second later it clicked in his processor exactly who the question referred to.

"That's just one of Ratchet's patients. Sounds like she'll be here a couple of days for medical assessments.

"Patient – nuisance."

"Nah, Firestorm is quickly becoming everybody's friend." Knockout remembered all too well a time not so long ago, when his own selfishness would have made him find the little bot far less than amusing. But as it was at present he had quickly become oddly protective of the young one that he shared a connection with due to a common disability.

"Patient, Firestorm – nuisance," Soundwave repeated. Though his face-plate was hidden as always behind his face-shield, Knockout, only through years of serving along side him on the warship, was sure he could almost sense his unrelenting glare.

Knockout did try to work out the cause of his colleague's harsh and pointed accusation. But Soundwave was Soundwave, and still as unpredictable as ever when it came to communication and social behavior. After sitting another minute with his head pointed directly forward with an assumed glare, he appeared to tune the other bot out entirely, and raising the datapad still held in his hands once again, he clearly turned his attention almost fully to that.

"Well whatever the case, she can hardly be confined to the medbay, and made to stay there," Knockout said, both baffled and frustrated. "She isn't sick. She has a damaged processor. And she needs to be able to walk and move to practice with the walking frame."

Soundwave only continued to silently ignore him now entirely.

"It wouldn't kill you, ya know, to socialize with the team from time to time," Knockout went on. He drove the cart slowly in reverse, carefully making his way toward the door, for a few meters before he finally turned around and continued on forwards. "Everything is different now, and times are changing fast. The old ways are done and they're never coming back. I can't imagine how the old silent, creepy, and far beyond anti-social thing, is possibly going to keep on working for you in the new world we're building."

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Standing in the doorway of the small recreation room on the lower level, Arcee smiled toward Knockout, who was busy inside the room. The red bot, sitting on his cart, Held onto one of Firestorm's hands with his right. Her other hand rested against his armrest for balance, as she struggled to remain standing on one foot, while he very gently pulled her slightly from side to side. The little bot very soon stumbled badly, lurching forward roughly, and dropping her raised foot hard onto the floor, before the trip without a chance to try to catch herself, sent her falling forward against Knockout's body.

Still holding onto her with his stronger hand, he used his right arm strength to push her very gently backward, and helped her back into a stable and balanced standing position. With his right hand obviously still occupied, he used the fingertips and a slight motion of the left to direct her to change feet and to try standing only on the other one. Firestorm immediately raised one foot slightly from the floor, and though she immediately began to lose whatever stability she had had, she clearly trusted that Knockout knew how to not let her fall to the floor, and she just kept on trying to hold her terrible balance for as long as she could. For all her trying and risk of falling, and the clear physical effort it took for her just to stand with her weight supported mostly on one leg, the little bot grinned just as bright as usual.

"He'll be so good with your youngling," said Speedbreaker. She stood beside Arcee in the doorway, and smiled a little herself.

"Yeah," Arcee nodded. "I can't believe now I was almost scared to tell him I was carrying at first."

"How much longer will you carry now?"

"Fourteen days. Give or take a few of course."

"Coming up fast..."

"I'm honestly amazed when I stop and really think about just how fast."

Knockout had managed a short time before, to pull his shoulder harnesses over the back of the cart with an awkward reach of his right arm, and small amount of struggling with clumsily fingers. And completely by his own choice and willingly, he'd strapped himself into the seat of his mobility cart. That way, he could maintain stability without working hard at it, while he supported the weight of the little bot pulling against him.

Eventually though, and with Firestorm leaning against his arm rest again to hold her balance, while she, at his instructions, helped him to pull the straps back over his head and over the back of the cart, he got himself unstrapped again. He motioned with his good hand, for her to sit herself on the floor facing toward him, and he leaned forward a little, the furthest he probably could without a risk of a fall and gently he pushed her slightly to one side and then the other and back again several times. Clearly he was making an assessment of her seated balance, with which she was much stronger than standing.

Firestorm got herself awkwardly back onto her feet again, and at Knockout's prompting she balanced – or tried to however terribly – on her right foot. She switched after a moment to her left foot, and nearly fell simply doing that. But she caught herself quickly against the cart's armrest again.

"No one can say how far you can go, even with work and practice," Knockout said, with a slight little smile, when Firestorm's almost constant grin momentarily let a frown of frustration show through. "But I personally see no reason why, with a lot of hard work and practice, rebuilding your strength, retraining your balance, you won't be running someday."

The little yellow and white bot's frown quickly gave way once again, to a bright and laughing grin that spread across her face-plate and made her blue optics light up. She walked carefully and slowly across the room, to retrieve her walking frame, which had been left close to the far wall of the rec room. She walked back to the middle of the room much faster holding its handlebars and leaning part of her weight against it.

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It was getting late into the evening, and Bulkhead was in the training gym, getting in a workout with his preferred heavy punching bag, before he went off to his room to recharge for the night after a quick container of his evening fuel. Heavy metal music, one of many tracks, he'd gotten from Miko, did not know the name of, but counted among his favorites anyway, blasted away on the portable music player brought down with him from his room.

"Lookin' for a quick match?" He asked, without turning around, as soon as he could hear the heavy footsteps of a bot close to the doorway, over the sound of his music. He gave a bag one more good solid punch with his large fist, and took a second to simply stand on the gym floor rocking his head and upper body forward and back in time to the beat, before it occurred to him just how loud the volume really was. He reached down toward the music player near his feet, and turned it down to a far lower volume level, before finally turning around to see who it was that had entered the gym.

Arcee's feet were far too small to stomp so loudly, and Knockout sadly, did not have footsteps at all. That left Bulk' to assume that it was either Wheeljack, Smokescreen, or Bumblebee, possibly Ratchet, that had come into the gym. And he nearly stumbled backwards from one wrong and awkward step, in his own shock at finding himself instead face to face with Soundwave.

"Sorry," Bulkhead mumbled, unsure all along what it was he was actually apologizing for to begin with. "I thought you were someone else..."

He had no idea at all what would or should happen from there. Best case, he figured, the creepy and silent 'con defector, would walk away again, realizing the gym was already in use, and come back later to use it himself. Worst case, he would silently, but no less pointedly push his determined will. Bulkhead decided in a second, he would quite happily agree to just leave himself in that case.

But instead of doing either, Soundwave, still facing Bulk' and standing a decent ways away from him, only tipped his head down and back up again, appearing to look him over once with hidden optics. He stood still another moment, and appeared to consider. Then quickly he raised both arms in front of his black and purple body in a clear and obvious fighting stance.

Bulkhead would never in a thousand years, have challenged Soundwave to a training match on purpose. For one thing, he would have assumed quickly that the bot would simply never want to train with anyone. He'd never seen him do so, yet. And for another, he quite frankly didn't exactly want Soundwave as an opponent on that or any given day, friendly training match or not!

But Bulkhead knew and understood just how hard a few of his teammates had been trying, in some way, any way really, to find a social connection with this strange and terrifying silent bot. Knockout, it seemed, had always been the best at it. He'd had more then one real conversation with the new defector, and that was far more than anyone else could do. But they had both been 'cons. They'd severed together as crewmates. And most of the time, even Knockout could barely keep Soundwave's interest in anything that even slightly resembled interaction.

Bulkhead gave a little shrug of his huge shoulders, and after picking up the music player to move it to a safer place near the wall, he planted his feet firmly and raised his own arms in front of him. He figured a good practice match never could do him any harm, and though he would more than likely lose at least he could say he'd tried...

Changing in rapidly toward him, Soundwave threw him to the rubber padded floor before Bulk' understood exactly how he'd even done it. The big green bot hauled himself back to his feet again as fast as he could, and with his head lower and his arms in front of him, she went for a good head on charge at his opponent. He was back on the mats, face up and gasping for an intake, suddenly tripped and downed quickly by a kick from one lanky and deceivingly strong leg.

Bulkhead managed, after getting to his feet again, to get in a couple of good solid punches, before his hits were blocked by one arm, while Soundwave hit him with a shocking level of force, with the other hand. Bulkhead transformed one of his hands then into it's wrecking ball mode, seeing a need to put even greater effort into the match. But before he could get in even one hit with his now weaponized hand, he was knocked to the floor by a flying kick that he could barely recover from, before he was dragged into the air by a good solid grip around his shoulders, and flipped straight up over Soundwave's head, as the silent bot shifted at the last second, to let him crash hard to the other end of the mat without tripping himself up and falling himself.

"I got ya now you pile of junk, scrap metal," Bulkhead roared, as he got himself somewhat awkwardly to his feet yet again. He managed to issue a short and fast succession of heavy blows from his built-in weapon. But it was only through sheer will and focused determination, which bordered on barely controlled anger, that let him do even that much.

He was well aware that he was fighting much harder, far more violently than he ever had before in a simple training matching. Such a thing, would typically have only been a friendly game of combat skill, meant only for a little recreation and some good practice. But against Soundwave, he was learning too quickly, that keeping himself in check even slightly would mean a terrible and humiliating loss. Bulk' knew he'd lose. He knew his opponent was better than him. But he hadn't realized until he found himself fending off rapid attacks with his own strong blows and losing anyway, just how much better he actually was.

"I'll bash your face in!" Bulkhead bellowed in threat, as he clambered to his big feet after he was grabbed and bodily thrown hard in an over the head throwing move for the second time. He managed only out of sheer determination to grab hold of Soundwave's mid section with both of his hands and shove him backward to the mats. He let his own weight fall hard on top of him, and for a moment he kneeled over him, wrecking ball poised in the air ready to slam down against the silent bot's hidden face.

But he was well out of line, and in that instant he new it. It may have been the roughest and brutal of any training match he had ever taken on. But it was still indeed only training, and meant to be only a friendly fight. He lowered his hand then, and even transformed it back, out of it's heavily weaponized mode.

"Signal your surrender," he said, slightly exhausted and fighting a little for his intakes. He knew that Soundwave may simply not know the technically rules around Autobot matches, and he went on to quickly explain while still kneeling over him, "Five seconds to surrender, or to get yourself up from here."

To Bulkhead's surprise – and though he knew it should not have actually surprised him at all – the black and purple bot rolled himself fast to one side, flung Bulk' off of him, and leapt to his feet again, with both arms once again in their fighting stance.

"Surrender – unacceptable," Soundwave declared aloud, speaking with clear if not somewhat awkward language.

"Whoa… you… you actually talked out loud," Bulkhead sputtered a little in a tone of maybe a bit too much surprise. He had heard Soundwave speak only once, a tiny declaration of his own perceived superiority while he refused to give information. And at that time it had been in a modulated computer voice, that was clearly not actually his own at all. The voice Soundwave spoke in now was strangely and unexpectedly quiet, but still so clearly Cybertronian.

"Yes," he said simply, in response to Bulkhead's surprise over the matter.

Neither of the bot's made a move to fight anymore, but instead both just stood in the center of the gym, each looking toward the other with their own individual curiosity. After a moment, Bulkhead turned and began a light workout with the heaviest of the punching bags, hung from the ceiling on its heavy duty chain.

"Hey, thanks for the match," he said, as he gave the bag a few good hard, but slow punches.

Soundwave, still in the middle of the floor, had began to practice unarmed combat maneuvers, and had quickly fallen into a pattern of fast spinning kicks. He fell backward onto the floor mats, catching himself, with his arms extended behind him, and it was clear that the fall was not a mistake or a tumble at all. But instead a deliberate and well controlled drop to the floor, and one from which he rapidly got back to his feet after a quick rolling motion.

"A bot could learn some real skill from you," Bulk' commented. He was chattering on, with no real idea if he might ever receive any reply or not. Soundwave had chosen to speak to him once. And Bulkhead knew, from a recent conversation with a very flustered and baffled Knockout, that at any point now, the odd and nearly silent bot would either other something that almost passed for conversation at least for a brief moment, or he would socially shut down entirely, falling utterly silent again, and tuning anyone at all out, just as though they were not even there at all.

"Nearly undefeated at one point in the fighting pits eh?" Bulkhead commented after another moment, and while still laying a decent little pounding on the punching bag. He went for one particularly hard hit, and then started into a simple combination of blows with steadily alternating hands. "Common knowledge is that you actually beat Megatron once in the arena..."

"Common understanding – based on partial misconception," Soundwave said. He continued on with his moves, but he did slow his pace a fair bit, clearly at least somewhat interested in conversing for the moment. "Match – ended as a draw. No true and clear winner."

"Every big shot on Cybertron always liked to say you beat him. That you were the first and last to ever kick his..."

"Incorrect. Win – undoubtedly possible regardless," Soundwave explained in his just as usually awkward speech. Instead of stopping there though, as it was so easy to assume he might, he continued on. "Megatron – up and coming leader to the masses. Visionary. Freedom fighter. A bot the world would listen to. His defeat in the pit – certain disaster for the slowly rising rebellion."

Bulkhead had never been a bot to follow or understand the ins and outs of politics, and public opinion, or the socially complicated game of leadership and influence. In his processor, Autobots were good, 'cons were bad, and the better side had won because in the end the 'good guys' always did. He could never have understood the complexities of that or another political situation his world had ever known. And quite frankly, the big green brute liked it that way. He nodded though at Soundwave slightly, in any case, trying hard to wrap his processor around his explanation.

"Previous judgment – lacking," Soundwave said after several long and silent moments, during which he had stopping his motions of hand to hand unarmed combat, and it seemed like he may simply turn to walk away from the gym.

"What, ya think maybe you should have gone ahead and beaten him after all, in hindsight?" Bulkhead asked simply, casually, when the other bot didn't go anywhere, as he might have expected. He gave the punching bag a couple more good hard blows, and felt himself finally growing satisfyingly tired from his training.

"Conclusion reached after fair consideration – Not only should I have beaten him. I should have killed him."

For a second after Soundwave had spoken again, Bulkhead stood on the padded floor mat, mouth open and wordlessly sputtering, wide optic'd with shocked disbelief at what he'd heard. He snapped out of it just well enough and barely fast enough, to stop the punching bag in its widely swinging arc, before it nailed him right in his face-plate, after he'd stopped paying attention after his last hard punch.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes/ Though it's likely obvious enough, this chapter begin, plot timing wise, immediately after the end of the last one. Its also just another collection of little, only partly related scenes. It's all still leading places. More real action and excitement coming soon.**

On the lower level of the base, down in the training gym, Bulkhead and Soundwave had begun to make almost a game of idly shoving the hanging punching bag back and forth toward one another, with their punching fists. Though Bulkhead knew he hardly should have been anymore, he remained surprised by the force and strength of soundwave's hits to the heavy bag. The bot was far from one that could be mistaken for weak my any means. But he was tall, and long limbed, with a frame that did not exactly look like one close to ideal for brute force attacks. And even when he pushed himself physically far beyond a level of skill that should have been nearly above him entirely, he barely seemed to tire.

"Confirmation inquiry..." Soundwave spoke up suddenly in the midst of a punch to the bag, back in Bulkhead's direction.

The big bot hit it hard at once, sending it back again. As he did he mumbled casually, "Yeah?"

"Megatron – Missing and assumed to be in willing exile?"

As he asked his awkwardly worded question, Soundwave stopped punching the bag, so that he could back up a short ways. He then processed to kick it instead.

Bulkhead had never been much for kicking, either while training or in any true hand to hand combat in battle. He was far more a fan of his integrated hand weapons, and his fists. But inspired by his unexpected training partner, he made the quick decision to jump slightly from the floor, while kicking with his right leg, aiming for the punching bag. He hit the punching bag at a terrible angle, nearly missing it entirely, and that awkward impact threw his whole body of balance. Bulkhead stumbled to catch himself, arms flying out beside him widely for a second, before he fell to the floor mat and right on his backside. This in turn made a terrible thump, and slightly shook the floor around both bots.

Though he, and most other bots really, would once have assumed such a thing was impossible or at least unlikely, Bulk' found himself wondering for a second if behind his darkened face-shield, Soundwave was silently laughing at him in the ridiculousness of his move.

"Nice way to sum it up, yeah," the big green bot said, hauling himself back to his feet again. "Megatron up and flew off one day. It was… err… quite a weird situation. Arcee will prob'ly have a report you could read or somethin.' I couldn't tell the story very well."

"Prime – offline?"

"We dunno for sure..." Bulkhead stood in the middle of the room, looking toward his estimation of where Soundwave's hidden optics must have been. The new defector had stopped his attacks against the punching bag and simply stood still and presumably listening. "It seems best to assume so. We all do. But an Autobot never really does quit hopin'"

"Events and circumstances – not understood due to time spent in shadow zone."

"Yeah, ya missed a lot."

"Emotion – confusion. Reaction – do not like it."

"You've got a lotta catching up to do." Bulkhead gave a little shrug of his massive shoulders and idly gave the bag another couple of half sparked punches, while he continued to look in Soundwave's direction. "It's a different world now. A brand new Cybertron."

"How to live in new world – unknown."

Though Bulkhead would never admit it to anyone, Soundwave's words made him feel almost bad for the bot. A once dangerous and feared enemy, was now lost in circumstances he could not yet even understand.

"I don't think anybot knows how to live in it yet," Bulk' said with another shrug, and trying to give what simple wisdom he could, to a bot he would once never have imagined he'd interact with as anything but a feared enemy, he knew in hindsight, he'd hated on little more than principle. He punched the bag again, and Soundwave moved again, to return it to him with a fast firm kick. "All of us... we were soldiers for so long, we don't know how to be anything else anymore. We're still remembering what it was we were good at once. What it was we used to want. I'm doing construction again. I guess I was pretty good at building stuff once before the war. I'm liking it now..."

Bulkhead had no idea what else to say on the subject, or any other for that matter. He knew he was simply no good at idle conversation, and small talk for the sake of small talking. And it hardly took a genius to know that Soundwave had absolutely no interest whatsoever in such pointless interaction either. But after a few more minutes of the two just punching and kicking the punching bag around for no reason at all, he decided to chance a question.

"You really meant what you said? 'Bout thinking you shoulda killed Megatron back in your fighting pit days?"

"Yes." Soundwave answered simply. And for any and all the hope that he may elaborate on that somewhat, he instead offered nothing more than a single nod of his head to accompany his one word answer.

"Hmm," Bulk' mumbled over continued, through slowing punches. The idea of even trying to imagine a world in which that reality had been, was far too much for his processor to work out, and really he saw little point in thinking much about it anyway. So instead of a real reply he only shrugged his huge shoulders yet again, and gave the bag one more good hit.

"Inquiry – rematch?" Soundwave asked. He stood again with his body in a fighting stance, and bulkhead only shook his head with a chuckle under his intakes.

"I'll take you up on that tomorrow," he answered, satisfyingly tired out well before then. "Let's grab some evening fuel, and we'll see if Acree's got some unclassified files for you to read, so you can catch up on the war you missed the end of."

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"Jack..." Arcee mumbled quietly, looking in the direction of the monitor mounted in her living space. "It's been a good while now since you've called me..."

"I guess almost a year now," the human answered back. The boy – no, young man already, Arcee realized with somewhat of a shock and almost disbelief at that – clearly sat at a desk somewhere in a simple white room, and with a couple of narrow cots and a small window behind him. He shrugged at his webcam. "Ten, eleven months now."

"I wasn't sure you'd ever call again… Miko and Raf still call us all the time, but you..."

Jack gave another shrug and looked at her over the monitor, with his face full of anxious uncertainty.

"I almost didn't plan on it," he admitted slowly. "I guess the whole giant transforming robot thing always was just a little weirder to me, than it was to the other two for some reason. Then just as I thought I finally understood how things worked with regard to said giant transforming robots, the game just changed and I couldn't keep up anymore."

For a moment Arcee silently studied her human former partner, over the monitor. Wearing a blue set of clothes she recognized as that of something to do with the US air force, hair cut shorter and bangs that once hung into his face now long gone, he somehow looked different to her. Yet still so much the same too.

"You look..." she said slowly, and with a slight laugh as she nearly shook her head in her disbelief, "like a grown up young human being now."

"Ha, Kind of I guess." Jack shrugged again and laughed a tiny bit himself. He took a drink from a red soda can, he'd lifted up from close to him on the desk. "I'm eighteen now. One of the big years for us humans." He gestured around the small room a little with the hand that was not holding the can. "I'm away at school now. Military collage. Rhode Island. Across the country from Nevada and my mom still calls three times a week to remind me to sort my laundry so I don't ruin my whites, or to make sure I've had a real breakfast and not just a banana and an energy bar on the run. It's a bit ridiculous really. She's been married to Bill.. or I guess still Agent Fowler to you, for months. Still though she's trying to take car of me, her grown up son away at school, instead of just loving her new married life."

"You're okay fine with your mother being remarried?" Arcee asked, both simply curious about a human situation she still knew so little about, and concerned for 'her' human.

On the monitor, Jack shrugged and then smiled slightly. "Sure. Why not? I mean, don't get me wrong, Arcee. If she had run off with some trucker named Bob, with a girlfriend Vegas, a criminal record, and a bad reputation for violence, I'd hardly be impressed. But my mom knows what shes doing. She knows what she wants. And Bill's a decent guy. He's good to her. He said he likes me like a son..."

"You still keep in touch with the other two human kids of team Prime?"

"Sometimes yeah. Raf and Miko talk to each far more I think. They practice Raf's Japanese and stuff. We do all still call each other though… Hey Arcee?"

"Yes?"

"Miko's been.. well… saying stuff. Crazy stuff… about you..."

"What?" Arcee's optics opened slightly wider in baffled confusion. She looked intently in the direction of the monitor and waited patiently for an explanation. She pulled her legs up in front of her on the recharge station she was sitting on to comfortably converse, and continued to calmly wait. Miko, she knew would never speak badly of the team. Whatever Jack was referring to, she was certain it was all a silly misunderstanding.

"She said… well she's told me that you…" Jack sounded suddenly so much less like the young man he'd become and far more childlike. Confused, baffled. Even bordering on terrified now, as his eyes opened wider and he stared unblinking at his webcam. "You and Knockout are bondmates!"

Arcee only nodded her head slowly, as she understood quickly and with a sinking spark, just what the matter of Miko and the 'crazy stuff' was about. She smiled then, only to show him the best way she could that she was truly happy. That his look of terror was unfounded. She opened her mouth then to speak again, but Jack interrupted before she could say anything.

"I was still holding out hope that… that maybe this was some Miko prank… her idea of a joke..." he mumbled almost inaudibility as his eyes grew wider.

"You miss out on a lot of news when you don't keep in touch with up with an old friend, Jack," Arcee said. She was trying for a lighthearted reply, and she was still smiling too. But Jack only looked first more panicked, and then simply shocked again. A moment passed. And then anther one, before Jack finally spoke up again.

"Were the two of you given to each other by your factions or something?" he asked, questioning in a tone that sounded both disgusted and still baffled, as well as strangely hopeful in some odd way. "Some kind of mutual peace offering or something…?"

"Of course not. In a mutual peace agreement I would never have been given to their defector. Wouldn't make any sense." Arcee was joking with him, of course, and she carried on the game for slightly longer. "In a deal like that I would likely have been given to Starscream. Maybe Shockwave..." She made a point of giving an over the top cringing motion, and grinning for a second before she said as an after thought, "Hmm… there's Soundwave too. He would have been a possibly I suppose…. But what would we possibly have found to talk about over morning energon…"

But despite her greatest effort, Jack was not laughing.

"Arcee…?" he said after many long seconds of simply staring at his webcam speechless. "Why would you… How did..."

"It's been quite the year, Jack. After you left after our last visit to Earth we discovered that sadly, Knockout was not fully functional. He's not even close now. But he needed a friend above anything else I suppose. Stuck in a recharge station in the corner of the medbay, unable to walk, or do much else at all really, he was just lonely and bored. At first I just wanted to keep him company. To make him laugh and smile. I quickly realized that I saw him as strong, and smart, and determined… eventually we just needed each other. And it wasn't about a damaged bot needing help to hold his own fuel container, or just making sure he wasn't sad or on the verge of giving up, anymore. I've lost so much in life. So many bots that meant so much to me. Hopes and dreams, all of it so far gone that I didn't know by the end of the war if I was coming or going anymore, or I'd ever really be okay when I finished picking up the pieces of what was left of my own existence. I wouldn't have thought in a million years that the bot that could teach me to laugh again, to make me realize it was okay to be a bit broken sometimes, would be Knockout of any bot."

"Arcee," Jack said when the bot had stopped speaking again. His eyes, focused perhaps too intently on the monitor, appeared close to burning with anger. "He can't possibly be one of your personal heroes, or someone you see even one admirable thing about. It sounds like you've forgotten entirely that Knockout is a Decepticon!"

"He was once, yes. But that was..."

"After so many years – centuries- fighting 'cons. After your own planet was totaled by the war. After you finally got your home back, against all odds, and no thanks to those sparkless brutes…. Arcee how could you possibly..." Over the monitor, Jack looked like he was clearly trying so hard just to simply remain angry, furious with her. But behind his rage, Acree saw the innocent child she once knew, as he stared down to the desk he sat at, so clearly only for the sake of hiding the tears in the corners of his eyes at his own confusion and despair. She had seen Knockout do something so very similar so many times, and Arcee reflected for a second on just how much the humans really were not unlike her race. Jack looked up again at the monitor. The expression on his face now was one of no nonsense seriousness that she had never seen on him ever before.

"If he ever hurts you or any of the team in any way," the young human said. He held up a hand now clenched into a vicious fist and with the other he sent his soda can flying from the desk. "I swear to God, I'll destroy him!"

Arcee, despite her best efforts to understand exactly where it was that her human friend was coming from, was slowly growing frustrated with his behavior. She wanted to see it from his perspective if even for just a moment so that she could really relate to him and his own panic and anger. But his call had been entirely unexpected, she was strangely tired to begin with, and just lacked the spark for any long down out argument filled with explanations the human was not even bothering to try understanding.

"No one is going to hurt anybody, Jack," she sighed, with a slight shake of her head, which she slowly lowered to rest on one hand propped on a bent elbow. "You've always trusted me before. So trust me when I say Knockout and I love each other by our own choice. You may never believe it and that's okay. I understand. But I'd trust that bot with my life."

"Miko says you're carrying a... well, what she calls a transformer baby."

"Yes."

For a moment Jack looked just plan mad all over again. Every bit of the slowly fading rage of his so clearly threaten to return quickly. But she saw him slowly smile a little instead, even if it was so obviously halfhearted and doubtful.

"I gotta go," he said. "I'll call again sometime, see how things are going."

"Bye Jack," Arcee said quickly. She smiled and raised a hand to wave a polite goodbye. But her human friend had killed the connection quickly, and before she could even open her mouth again.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Knockout sat parked at the edge of the cliff top that had quickly become a favored place of both he and Arcee to sit and talk to each other while they watched the setting sun. But tonight Arcee was far from sitting in one place, and neither one of them had been talking a lot either.

Arcee had been standing near the cliff's edge a short ways away from him for a while, appear to simply stare down over the steadily growing residential and commercial area, that returning bots had taken to calling the first 'new' city's 'downtown.' Slowly, still so clearly distracted, she stepped back from the edge and paced a little, walking very slowly from one end of the cliff top to the other.

"Arcee?" he said in growing worry, as he rolled the cart forward until it was only inches from the cliff's edge. He took in the view himself while he watched his so clearly nervous and visibly upset bond mate.

"Oh my..." Arcee exclaimed, as she turned again to look at him, and she saw that he had moved. "Knockout, if you want to be parked there, please lock your brake!"

"Okay," Knockout answered simply. He raised his right hand from where it had been resting in his lap, for a second in a gesture of assent to her wishes, and then reached down to quickly lock the safety break at the right side of the cart. He had taken his foot off the power pedal just as soon as he had stopped moving the machine, and he didn't the thing would actually go anywhere without him powering it. But her optics continued to stare at him with strange worry, until he locked the brake anyway. So he did so she could feel better about it.

"What's the matter?" he asked after a moment. She had stopped her pacing and moved to sit on the ground beside the cart, only to get back up in under a second and stand up looking over 'downtown' again.

"I… I'm fine," Arcee answered. Her tone was hesitant, but turned and looked at him at once, with a smile on her face-plate. Sitting down again, this time close beside him and the parked cart, she turned to rest her head against his knees and reached to hold the finger tips of his left hand.

"Arcee," Knockout said. He reached with his right arm, so that he could rest his hand over the back of one of her shoulder panels. "Please talk to me..."

"I've been thinking maybe I should space bridge back to Earth tonight," she mumbled into his body armor.

"Something to do with that comm call today from Jack?" Knockout asked after a moment. He sat exactly where he was, with a hand against her shoulder panel.

She nodded her head slowly, and with it still pressed against his armor. "I just… Jack seemed so angry, but I don't think he really was at all. He's worried and sad and thinks I'm in some real danger, and he's just a tiny human, back on Earth and powerless to help me if I really was in trouble. If… if I could just talk to him face to face, see him in person, I think he might just see that I'm not..."

"Arcee," Knockout spoke with real compassion and understanding. But he let his concern show just as well. "it's late. It's dark out..."

"It might be daylight in Rhode Island. I'm… not actually sure to be honest. But in any case I drove on Earth at night all the time. That's what my headlight is for..."

The blue bot lifted her head again slowly, and as soon as Knockout let go of her and gestured with a smile and an inviting motion of his good hand, she carefully climbed into his lap. Immediately she turned her body so that she could wrap both of her arms around him and once again rest against his body armor. When the added weight slightly but still clearly shifting the balance of the cart, made him slightly nervous, he carefully moved to release the safety brake. And without him even needing to ask her to out loud, she moved slightly again, so that she could reach behind her and bump the hand control just a little, to send the cart backward, a ways back from the cliff's edge.

"You could come with me," Arcee said thoughtfully after a moment. She shifted again so that she could look up into his optics and she gave an uncertain and confused smile. "Maybe it would be even better, more effective if you did come along. Let Jack see you again, see that you are hardly some terrible Cybertronian monster that's going to kill me any second."

"Arcee, that young human has obviously formed an opinion a good while ago and it's likely nothing will change it now."

"He was my human partner for over an Earth year. We taught each other so much. We worked to save both of our words together. I cared for that young human like I would my own child. I just… I hate that he hates you…."

"It is a sad situation. But everyone always will have an opinion..."

"He implied he might just want to destroy you.." Tiny streams of coolant suddenly appeared in the corners of Arcee's optics, and she dropped her head to her mate's shoulder panel at once.

"Teen aged human, verses armored Cybertronian?" Knockout chuckled a little, trying hard to make her do so as well. "Even disabled, I'm not exactly worried about.."

"That's not the point!" Arcee cried. Her small frame began to tremble a little with her anxiety and so clearly mixed up feelings about the whole matter. "I know he can't hurt you. I know he wouldn't even if he somehow could, because of how much that would upset me. But that's not that point. I want him to see that he's wrong. That I'm fine and happy and then he can just do good in school and sleep at night, and..."

"I see," Knockout said, sure he understood now. "I never thought once I'd ever really understand a bot's relationship with a human. They were just weir looking little organic things that made noise, made messes and seemed so simple and almost ridiculous. Then little Miko decided she needed to be my friend even when she was told specifically not to. To get to talk with a lillte human child myself, and finally see what it is that made you care so much about them, made you want to protect them…" Knockout chuckled again as he pulled his mate closer to him with his stronger arm and hand.

"Do you think I'm over reacting?" Arcee questioned. She looked up at him again.

"Listen," Knockout answered. Her drive to action made him almost proud and pleased in a way. But more so it concerned him, more than just a little bit. "You're very far into carrying. And we both know that I can't just up go anywhere without some planning and preparation. Just up and space bridging away from Cybertron on an hour's notice, without a real plan in mind… And anyway, Ratchet would undoubtedly hit the ceiling if he knew either one of us was even thinking about doing this. It's late. You're tired. You're stressed out. It'll all make far more sense in the morning. We can rethink the situation then."

"You're right," Arcee sighed. But she finally smiled as well. Slowly she shook her head and let it fall gently back against her mate's body armor. "I'm being… crazy..."

"Ha. Late into carrying. I think you're well entitled to a little bit of crazy by now." It was a somewhat tricky thing to do, and did take some thinking and a couple of slow and careful tries to get it right. But Knockout managed eventually to shift her weight still resting on top of him, by carefully shifting his body as well as he could. With her still half siting and half laying on him and with her feet dangling over the side of the cart, she eventually managed to move his right hand enough that he could bump it again the left wrist, getting his left hand onto the control switch all without accidentally shoving her off.

He knew she would have moved in an instant, to get off of him, had he asked her too. That certainly would have made it simply to move himself so that he could drive. But he didn't entirely want her too and they both knew it. He wanted the feeling he had so come to love, of her weight resting on top of his lap and front panels. And she wanted see if he could do it all on his own, all without dropping her. Or maybe, he thought, considering again as he looked at her, with her face-plate almost entirely hidden against his shoulder panel, and both of her small hands barely holding on to him anymore, she was simply exhausted and had barely understood his need to move at all.

"We'll bridge to Earth at some point," Knockout said quietly to his mate. He began to roll the cart slowly forward over the tiny loose chunks of the unfinished road back toward the base. Moving slowly, he managed to round a sharp corner without dropping her. "We'll bring our little one with us. Make our way to Tokyo too. I still owe Miko that visit, and she'll be bouncing off the walls over getting to meet a Cybertronian youngling, face to face-plate."

"A very small child, far bigger than she is..." Arcee mumbled tiredly, with a tiny laugh. "Poor Miko, trying to work out how to play with her..."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"Morning Knockout," Bulkhead greeted somewhat hurriedly. He looked up from the table he sat at with Wheeljack, while both bots drank from containers of energon, and looked intently over a data pad laying on the table between them.

"Morning," Knockout mumbled back quickly. He nodded those two of his teammates. He gave a usual over the top grin as well, as he rolled the cart past their table and toward the other side of the common room.

Turning though in the center of the room, his attention caught at once by a great deal of noise in another passage way, one that lead to the lift and a couple of storage rooms, he lifted his right foot as fast as he could from the power pedal, and moved fast to tap the foot brake before almost smashing into Speedbreaker, who stood in front of him with a rusty iron crate in her hands. Speedy, laughing slightly, held one foot up in front of her, using it to stop the slowing cart before it hit her. She didn't even drop the large heavy box she carried, and shared a quick chuckle with Bumblebee who stood right behind her, with a box of his own.

A refugee ship was on its way home to Cybertron, due to arrive sometime early the next morning, according to communication received by the base in the night. The ship was one on the small side, carrying only forty-three bots and it's cargo. But the notice it had been able to give regarding its arrival had been the shortest received yet, seemingly due to trouble with its long range communication systems. And the Autobot team had been left scrambling to ready the base for forty-three guests in a very short time. Knockout, had been thrown headlong into the midst of that chaos just as soon as Ratchet had, in his own rush to complete four tasks or more at once, helped him to transfer to his cart that morning.

"Where's this going?" Speedbreaker asked of anybot that was within earshot. She nodded toward the heavy box in her hands, and shifted it slightly, trying for a better grip, as she looked around the common room.

"Downstairs. Lower level rec room," Knockout said, repeating information he had heard from Ratchet a moment or two before when the old bot had hurried down the hallway beside him for a short while, before he had disappeared somewhere. He reached out with his good hand, gesturing to to box. "Actually, let me take that."

Speedbreaker, without protest, put the box down carefully enough but still quickly onto his lap, before she turned fast, and grabbed a much lighter box somebot had left in the middle of the common room. Knockout rolled the cart down the corridor, heading for the lift, with Speedy and 'Bee both behind him, and each packing their boxes.

More noise came from up the corridor, as the three bots approached. And as they rounded a slight bend, they discovered Smokescreen, half inside and half out the open door of storage room four, trying to drag out a large sized folded worktable. A large box he'd left balancing on the side of the folded table, due to a lapse in judgment and nowhere else to really put it, wobbled as he pulled the table forwards. The bot grabbed it at once, but stood then holding the box in his hands, stuck in the storage room behind the folded work table and with nowhere to put the box. He shook his head and gave a little chuckle at his own poor planning, as Bumblebee and Knockout both took a second to laugh about it.

"I've got it," Knockout said, reaching for the dangerously unstable box with his functional hand, as he pulled the cart closer to in order to reach. Smokescreen stood for too long of a moment, hands fumbling with the badly placed box, and his knee the only thing now preventing the worktable from falling hard against the door. With a look of hesitation so clear it would have been almost offensive were he not a teammate, Smokescreen let the box go and let the red bot on the cart place it onto his lap using only his stronger arm.

"What is all this stuff anyway?" Speedbreaker questioned. She gestured with her optics toward the boxes they carried, as the trio continued on toward the lift. She shook her head as the noise of Smokescreen's continued fight with the folded table behind them.

"A whole pile of information data pads to give to the returning bots. Just like the one you and your family got when you landed." Bumblebee shrugged slightly he walked at the front of the little group. "Some tools a couple of them asked for in order to fix an energon refiner..."

It took slightly more effort and caution, because of both the mobility cart and the boxes that the bots carried with them, but they managed still quite simply enough to get all of them into the lift.

"Hey thanks for grabbing those..." Speedbreaker said. She turned herself slightly in the tight space of the lift to look from Knockout's optics to the heavy boxes that sat now well balanced on his lap. He held the top one steady with his right hand, while the left stayed resting against his cart's hand control.

"Ha. What can I say?" the red bot laughed once, and then he flashed a grin at the young neutral. "Everyone does love a team player!"

Knockout felt on some level, like perhaps he almost ought to resent the job of carrying heavy boxes. On board the warship, he'd once been an officer. And he'd so rarely hesitated to let anyone below him in rank know it through his prideful bragging rants. Carrying cargo around the place himself, especially if it was heavy, just would not have happened easily. The menial job was humiliating to be caught doing, and besides it tended to scuff paint, which simply would not do. That's what the vehicons were for. And Knockout had never had any ill feeling at all about simply grabbing the closest available trooper, and instructing him to do his heavy work for him.

He found now though that he actually didn't mind the task at all. There were so many things he couldn't do at all, or at least not quickly or efficiently enough to truly be of any use to anyone, as far as he could see it. But to pile boxes onto his lap while he drove himself on the cart, just to move things around the base, made perfect sense. Beside the weight and the balancing was a challenge. And strangely he found himself enjoying the task of moving boxes.

"No sign of Arcee yet this morning," Speedbreaker commented, with slight concern evident in her voice. The lift came to a stop with a slight bump against the bottom of the elevator shaft it rode on, and the trio of bots quickly got back out again. "She okay?"

"Recharging late. I made her," Knockout answered as he rolled the cart along the narrow hallway of the lower level. He laughed slightly and felt some sense of pride in himself at having managed to convince her to do exactly that. "Arcee is on medical leave now anyway. Ratchet's orders, which I was more than happy to back up."

"Good." Speedy grinned back. She may have been young, but the young bot certainly looked like she understood the other's exhaustion. "She's looked like she's needed that for a while."

"Yes, and I'm perfectly fine now," Arcee said, unexpectedly getting to her feet from a position she had been in on the rec room floor, apparently checking some connections for a computer monitor that had been set up near the back wall.

She crossed the room quickly, with er optics glaring in mock annoyance at Knockout, and the red bot felt his spark drop a bit with dismay as he realized he had not succeeded in making her rest at all.

"Knockout," she said, her tone a mix of mild disappointment and almost amusement. "When I told you I'd rest a bit, I didn't mean half the morning. I hardly meant for you to roll away and start working without me."

"You needed the rest," he protested with a smile and a tiny laugh, even as she glared at him.

"I suppose I was tired..." she admitted slowly. She stood a second, her expression turning from her mild annoyance to one of bewilderment instead. She slowly shook her head just a little muttering, "I remember we were outside, on our cliff looking over the city and talking. I don't even remember coming back here."

Knockout only chuckled then as he made a point of pulling her closer to him with his functional hand. He grinned when she leaned her weight against him, so obviously trying not to upset the boxes that still sat on his knees. "You were practically asleep on my lap and the cart. I carried you back to base. Ha. Ratchet certainly had a little chuckle when I asked him to help me put you back down so I could then be transferred to the recharge station."

"I'm still so guilty of forgetting that physically you're still pretty strong."

"Yes."

For all of another second, Arcee stood resting against him, and chuckled lightly. Then straightened herself up, stepped back, and looked around purposefully around the room.

"I'm carrying, not dying," she mumbled seriously. "I can hardly rest indefinitely while a ship is on it's way in. Now where is Smokescreen with that work table anyway. I need it along that far wall, so we've got somewhere to stack those data pads."

Knockout exchanged looks of disbelieving concern with Bumblebee as Arcee matched quickly away, crossing the room toward the wall she had intended said worktable to go, and then went off the other direction, instead to fuss with the monitor again. The two bot's looks turned instantly to dread, when Ratchet walked fast into the recroom, and they saw him nearly bump right into Arcee, who he had specifically was to be doing next to nothing at all.

"Ratchet… I… I tried to make her..." Knockout stammered his words despite his best efforts not to.

But the old bot only shook his head and gave a somewhat obviously sarcastic laugh under his intakes.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

The Autobot base was in a state that was slowly beginning to resemble complete chaos. It had been that way all morning, as the Autobots prepared for the impending arrival of a shipload of returning refugees. And Soundwave, seemingly forgotten in the rush of bots hurrying to ready for returning bots requiring briefing and directions on housing and resources, wandered the halls somewhat aimlessly and glad to have been forgotten all about.

Not long before, he had wandered right past the file room, whose always locked door, had been left unlocked and slightly ajar. He laughed inwardly for a second, before he shook his head in silent confusion at the conflict that door had quickly brought him. A well learned and long enforced sense of duty had made him think immediately of creeping inside the unlocked room (not like a lock could have really stopped him in the first place had he been truly determined to get inside,) in order to quickly and efficiently scan through ever saved file on the Autobot mainframe, and send to his own faction. Then, just as quickly, he remembered again that his faction was gone. Most had disbanded, probably with no interest at all in Autobot intel anyway in any case. His own leader was gone, and another, left behind to take over and struggle with the fast failing task of establishing new order, had tried to kill him.

Soundwave fallowed the hallway, as it rounded a corner, past the closed doors of living quarters. These he knew were not locked and passworded as some were. These ones were empty, sitting unused. He thought for a moment he ought to laugh at the Autobot's and their belief that they could truly win a war with their numbers so small, their bases generally housing a third the bots they should have. But still, they had for all intents and purposes, already won the war with those small numbers and sparks filled with she sheer determination to never lay down and die.

He had not been outside of the base at all since he had been found and brought in, and he had never exactly pressed the matter of going outside. Centuries of serving on a worship, leaving for the ground or the open skies only when a mission called for it, had made him used to being indoors. In fact he had long preferred the safely of the warships corridors, and the dimly lit silence of the comm room and his out of the way, locked, and rarely disturbed office, to the brightness of the world outside. But still fresh air and sunlight, particularly that of Cyberton's bright white and distant sun, were needs that even he had on occasion. And mostly out of boredom and with little else to do, he made his way to the side doors he knew led into the fenced off and courtyard. In his storage compartment, he carried the one data pad file he had been given, handed willingly to him by Autobot Arcee that morning in the midst of her rushing about. She had told him hurriedly that the pad contained the reports of events had he missed, and that she hoped it might make sense enough that he could feel better about it all.

To read from a data pad outdoors, with bright sunlight reflecting off the pad, was far more difficult for him to do than it was most any other bot, because of the way he had rigged his own optical systems to function through his face-shield's hidden view screen. But he thought that perhaps there might just been a place out there shaded enough he could make it work. So, with Laserbeak following his path, flying up near the ceiling and clearly enjoying the freedom of it, he continued on toward the back doors.

The sound of feet moving slowly toward him, still unseen around another curve in the hallway, made him slow his own steps to listen. The approaching steps he heard were slow. Small metal feet dragging more than a bot's feet should, accompanied by the noise of the tiny wheels of a walking frame rolling along the rough flooring. Soundwave, to his own dismay, felt his spark, faced with a run in with the one young bot he knew expected he would socialize when he barely could. The one small bot that he should have been able to scare away from him simply and could not.

"Hi, Soun-wave," Firestorm grinned her strangely calm and cheery grin, as he rounded the corner and met her near the base's rear doors to the courtyard.

"Imm goin' hometonigh'," she said slowly in her usual muddled and slightly slurring speech, when he had not said a word to her after a few seconds. She gestured with her optics down tot he walking frame she leaned against to stand up straight. She had a new one now, obviously newly constructed, and correctly sized for her small frame. It was even painted in a light pale yellow to match her own body point, and she looked clearly so happy to have it.

"I can learnta balance betternow," she said, still grinning far more than Soundwave felt she would if she only knew half of the things he had done as a 'con. "Ratchet saysIcan walk normalif I keepatryin' it. Knockout saysIcan run..."

Soundwave, baffled and annoyed, but not willing to say a word, moved to step around her without a thought. His hand grabbed for the door handle and he pushed it open as soon as he had gotten easily by the little bot and the walking frame. She said something more. A simply and still cheerful and polite good bye and he heard a slow retreating footstep. But there was nothing more after that. The sound of her walking away had stopped as soon as it started. And she didn't say another word either. Soundwave wasn't sure exactly what it was that made him turn back around again to look at her, other than that something was suddenly off and he knew it. And somehow a sense of concern he never bothered to show before to anyone, made his spark skip once in its chamber.

Firestorm was standing still and silent in the hallway, optics staring toward the wall, and appearing to see nothing at all. After a second of this, she opened her mouth a little, and appeared to be trying to speak again. But her voice was nothing more than inaudible static. Without any warning the little bot's legs gave out beneath her. The walking frame tipped over to land on its side nearby, and before he could even question why he bothered, Soundwave had darted froward with impressive speed learned over years of combat training, and gently grabbed Firestorm before she fell face-plate down on the rough floor.

He lowered himself to the floor with her, and managed to shift her body around so that she lay face up when he put her carefully down into the floor. But beyond that most obvious action, Soundwave knew instantly that he had no idea at all, what to do.

The little bot's optics were still open, still glowing in their pale blue. And for a second he was sure she might have looked at him again, optics focusing on something specific, before she stared back off into nothing. Her small white and yellow frame began to tremble lightly from head to foot, and still baffled by the whole situation, Soundwave could only think to kneel close by, with no idea what it was he was seeing, but just as sure that leaving her by herself was the last thing anyone should do.

Every Decepticon had been trained in the basics of field first aid – though centuries spent on endless battlefields had convinced him that the Autobots, in their own training, were generally much better at it. He could use his own training with it, just as well as any 'con could do. But this was not a battlefield, and this bot was not exactly suffering from some sudden damage inflicted by weapons-fire. The little bot's trembling stopped and for a fraction of a second, he was relieved by that. Until both of her legs began to kick violently against the floor, feet scrapping hard and dangerously against the rough flooring of the hallway. Her optics blinked now from open to closed and back open again, and she still didn't appear to see much at all. But though the static of her barely working vocalizer, there was a sound that could only have been one of increasing panic.

Soundwave looked up then toward the ceiling, where his bird continued to fly, now only circling around above in her own clear confusion at a situation she was not trained for.

 _Laserbeak,_ he instructed over the telepathic link he shared with the little flying bot. _Fly quickly back toward the medical bay. Find help._

Laserbeak may not have been trained specifically in assistance tasks of that kind. Her primary job had always been infiltration and information recon. She was far better at breaking into any given place, than simply flying in invited. But she was smart. She could learn fast. She'd figure it out. And sure enough she was off at once, turning in the air, setting a path back in the direction she had been sent.

"Please, don't be afraid," Soundwave said, speaking out loud, when Firestorm screamed again in panic through though the static of her vocalizer. Her optics appeared to be struggling to focus and see him now. "Assistance – alerted."

Metal footsteps and the strange but familiar sound of Knockout's motorized mobility cart, got Soundwave's attention at once. And a strange amount of relief flooded his spark. Even though the bots were approaching from the wrong direction, some hallway leading away from the medbay, still he knew that Knockout, and with luck, whoever it was that was walking with him, would be of some use.

"...well that's very true, and quite obviously it's important to consider that," Knockout's voice said, as the approaching bots come closer and clearly in the middle of their own conversation. "Still though, even if an energon line were cut near the dislocated joint, we want to get the joint back in place first. An out of place elbow or knee will only even complicate things. Besides it was increase the injured bot's pain level horribly."

"What about a situation where the out of place joint was actually pinching the damaged line, and serving to control what would otherwise be horrible bleeding?" The other bot questioned. Soundwave thought he recognized the voice as that of the yellow and black one. Ratchet's medical student.

"Fair point," Knockout answered as the voices and the footsteps came closer. "Still though the best answer… That's not actually as helpful as you would think. Energon lose happens and it will then, probably massively if you mess this up. Think fast. Move even faster."

"Pop quiz, 'Bee," Knockout said quickly. He chuckled with slight laugh, though his tone remained serious as ever. "Large framed, adult bot has been down for ten minutes in full on spark failure before you get to him. You find him with no visible injured, broken parts, no obvious amount of energon on or near the frame..."

He stopped talking as the pair of bots came around the bend in the corridor, and for a fraction of a second both of them stood exchaging looks with each other and with Soundwave, who still sat helpless on the floor next to the fallen little bot. Knockout was on his comm unit in under a second, more than likely looking for more help. And Soundwave considered for the first time that perhaps it was time he appealed to the bots regarding his own comm code in the base network.

"Soundwave..." Bumblebee said slowly. The Autobot was stepping toward him fast, before he could even think of getting himself to his feet. And Soundwave, remembering suddenly a recent encounter with this same Autobot in the gym, after he had advanced toward the bot that turned out to be his promised bondmate, fully realized for the first time how bad the current situation may just have looked.

"Fault – not my own," Soundwave said. He kept his voice even as ever, and nearly emotionless, even through his sudden desire to be clearly understood in his intentions. "Firestorm – fell to the floor. Logical guess – sudden outset of illness."

Soundwave tried then to get to his feet quickly as he could. But to his surprise, the black and yellow Autobot held a hand toward him. Not quite touching his shoulder panel, but his hand still coming close to doing so.

"Clearly not your fault," he said, with understanding in tone of his voice. "Good call on stopping to try and help. Just… keep talking to her for a minute please."

"I knew there was some reason the bird here was behaving strangely when tried to dive bomb right at by head through the medbay door," Ratchet said, over the sound of his own hurried and heavy aproaching footsteps. Soundwave looked up to the see the old Autobot medic quickly kneel on the hallway floor, with Laserbeak riding quite contently perched on his left shoulder panel.

"Firestorm – alright?" Soundwave questioned, somewhat hesitant now as she finally got to his feet and let Laserbeak hop onto his arm.

"Yes yes, it seems so," Ratchet mumbled an answer while activating a handheld scanner he'd carried with him. "Processor reboot is all. But different from the ones we usually see with Knockout, but still…. If she snaps out of this in under a minute or two I might not even bother holding her in medical again. Oh, and Soundwave… thanks."


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes/ Thanks for the feedback I got on the last chapter. I really do appreciate it. And this one is later than I wanted.**

 **In answer to a guest review, I don't really have a schedule for updates. I know some writers try to, and I would love to as well, but, yeah not likely. I'm too busy with work and such, and then on top of them I'm just too known for scarping chapters part way through realizing I hate the direction it was going and have a better idea, lol. Nuber of reviews until a new update, makes no difference either. I might update with one, or none, or I end up struggling with the next chapter and not updating for weeks with five.**

 **Another guest review pointed out that Jack might be acting out of character. I had wondered if it was _too_ off for him. Thanks for the constructive criticism on that one. He will be back in the story later on though and hopefully his anger will make more sense. Maybe he just needs to tell his side of the story a little more.**

 **Regarding Soundwave (haha, I'm amazed at how many people seem to like that bot,) I'm not sure how far his story will go in this fanfic. (obviously it's much more Knockout and Arcee's story…. With increasing subplots.) _BUT…_ I've been kicking around the idea of starting on a second, related story when this one is finally done. A second part that may focus more on Soundwave as a main character. If anyone would read that, let me know, lol. **

The expected shipload of returning refugees, had arrived just as planned, sometime in the early afternoon. And the Autobot base was currently calming down again, after the chaos of briefings, and instruction, medical checks and minor treatment for anyone that needed it, and a general mess of bots everywhere – and most of them lost.

Arcee, insistent as ever on working despite displeasure from both a trusted senior medic and her own bondmate over it, was standing near the worktable set up along the far wall of the downstairs recreation room. She was chatting far more causally now with any bot still left at the base that needed any further assistance or information, and handing out the left of the data pads for the pile of them, to those that had not yet gotten theirs. She was also happily holding Takeoff, a small youngling that had been passed hurriedly to her, moments before by a hurried carrier who had struggled to keep a hold of him while he signed arrival documents.

"It gives a wonderful sense of hope, doesn't it," Knockout said thoughtfully, while he sat rolling his cart forwards and back slightly. On his lap sat Takeoff's twin, Runway, who he held onto carefully with his right arm while he drove with his left hand. "To see two this young..."

"A couple of little playmates for ours before we know it," Arcee answered, with a laugh and a pleased smile as she nodded in agreement with her mate's words. She took the pad of signed documents back from the twins' carrier, and still holding the youngling perfectly, she tossed it into her storage compartment. Her compartment was becoming very full of pads and pens and even a few empty energon containers the still confused refugees had been handing back to her.

So few new sparks had been created and carried on Cybertron in centuries. The war, and then the eventual launching away of the allspark, had seen to that. But that hardly meant there was no new life at all, created anywhere. Arcee and Knockout's young one, expected soon, would be the first to come to life on her own home world after the war. But there were more over the years, born on refugee ships, to bonded pairs that did the best the could to raise a new generation, doing the best they could while the ships sailed the stars. Many of the ship-born younglings were young adults by now. But there were a handful of little ones too, and among those newest created sparks, these two were the newest yet to land.

"So, we're really going to trust former 'cons with the next generation of life on our planet now?" a bot demanded arrogantly behind the little group. Arcee turned quickly to see that the comment had clearly been made by Sideswipe, a young Autobot who had arrived back to base that afternoon with the returning ship. "That guy's got optics as red as I've ever seen."

The red painted young warrior may have been Autobot by loyalty and sworn affiliation. But that hardly meant Arcee had always gotten along with the bot. He was well known for being hotheaded. And his reputation for letting trouble find him in many forms had followed him long after he had departed from Cybertron.

"Ha. Maybe we should be talkin' a minute about the risk of having little ones so close to a bot that thinks he knows it all, except when to keep his mouth shut." Wheeljack, busily looking at the jammed lock on a refugee's traveling case nearby, commented without looking up.

"Any informed and not completely ignorant and judgmental bot, would actually be looking for faction symbols and not so much at optic colors," said Speedbreaker with a self assured smile. She sat at the far end of the worktable, having voluntarily worked the afternoon on the task of registering the newly returned bots for their household utility hook ups. "I've been talking lately to some of the much older bots. It sounds like optic color was never a faction thing. At least not entirely. Why would it be? That could never make any sense anyway. According to the old bots, it may have had more to do with the cities each of the factions recruited from early on in the great war. We do tend to think red or blue, probably because those colors are the most common, and from there we assign a probable faction. But what the bots with neither color? The purples, yellows and greens?"

"Like I care what some know it all, wanna be fact finder, neutral has to say," Sideswipe answered no one in particular, while he shot defiant glares around the room. "We all know full well that bot's a 'con defector. And I don't give a frag about either optic colors or faction symbols. I'm not not just going to stand around and tell refugees it's somehow suddenly okay to be trusting..."

Bulkhead stood close to the closed sliding rooms of the rec room, where he'd been standing around much of the afternoon, discussing construction projects with anybot that wanted the info. And trying at the same time to actively recruit new builders looking for work. As the ranting from the angry and increasing disruptive young warrior grew louder, he turned to look toward the back of the room, and he shook his head for a second.

"Haven't you got anywhere to be, other than down here trying to make a scene, where clearly no one else is looking for any trouble or an uproar?" He asked the younger bot pointedly. And when several others, both Autobots and refugees alike, nodded their heads and mumbled in subtle agreement with the big bot, Sideswipe only shook his head, and spend a moment wordlessly huffing before he simply left the room and let the door shut behind him.

"Thanks for the baby juggling help," the twin's carrier, a young blue and green painted bot, who was quite clearly a flier, said with a grateful look and chuckle of laughter. He took each twin back one at a time and balanced one on each of his bent elbows.

"Not a problem at all," Arcee smiled back at once. "Thanks for letting us play with them. You will be able to find your away to your housing assignment alright?"

When the young flier nodded confidently, and left the rec room to head straight for the lift, Arcee turned back to stand facing her mate. And she grinned brightly.

"A practice opportunity for you," she said with a happy laugh. "See you can certainly still use your hand control safely and drive without dropping a little one." Knockout had expressed his growing worry about exactly that more than once in recent days, as Arcee's due date grew close.

"Just two bad those youngling twins are fliers though," Knockout said. He sat still on his cart, looking up and grinning a silly grin, before he mused with clear and obvious humor, "to grow up learning how to fly… to never get to feel the roadways under their wheels…"

"You seriously never wanted to fly?" Speedbreaker questioned. She looked over at him, from the chair she still occupied at her now empty post.

At that, Knockout's optics opened wide enough that the look on his face-plate as almost comical. It was obviously only by instinct brought on purely by nearly panicked aversion, that he rolled the cart backward with his left hand, while the right waved stiffly in front of him.

"No, no, no," he answered firmly, while his teammates laughed, almost unable to help it. "Firm ground under me at all times... good thing. Very good thing!"

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"Arcee," A bot called behind her, as she walked a corridor alone, making her way toward the living quarters she shared with her mate. She resisted the urge to sigh and even groan out loud, as soon as Sideswipe rounded a corner, after leaving the common room, and proceeded to hurry after her.

"Can I speak with you a moment?" the younger bot asked hurriedly.

"Respectfully..." he promised in under a second, and after she had not quite as successfully managed to suppress another groan of dread.

Arcee was tired, even if it was still early evening. She certainly had no plans of resting long But the short nap she had been on her way to take, not only sounded good to her then, but felt entirely necessary. Still duty came first, and though she may not have liked the young warrior much at all, it was hardly professional in her rank, to rudely brush him off, no matter how much she may just have wanted to. She turned to walk instead in the opposite direction without any real place in mind that she actually wanted to go, and settling instead for a walk for the simple sake of it.

"Walk with me," she said. Her hand gestured to him to do so.

"I took some time to read over and review some recent files today, after Bulkhead told me off...and I fully accept and understand by the way, after some thinking about it, that I probably deserved it."

Arcee gave a firm nod of her head before she commented almost a little too shortly, "our team is small and we all know how to work together well. We don't typically see a need for anyone to be publicly shouting our frustrations and making an all out scene about it. We prefer to discuss these things quietly like adults in private."

"Fine," Sideswipe answered with a bold shrug of his shoulders. "That's absolutely fair enough. I get that I was wrong to shout in the rec room like I did. That's why I decided to talk to you now instead."

Arcee admitted, even if silently and only to herself, that she was uncharacteristically in a strangely bad mood. She was running on a short fuse, too close to wrongfully snapping at anybot that got in her way. She was tired of course and in need of some quick recharge. But that was hardly an excuse for it. Slowly she made herself smile just a bit at the young bot, and forced away the need to snap with little reason. The young bot had admitted to his own mistake. And she knew that continued verbal discipline would hardly have been fair.

"Thank you," she said, meaning it and evening out her tone still more. She continued her aimless walk through the corridors with the new arrival walking beside her. "So, what's this about files then?"

"I've been reading over some recent records," Sideswipe explained quickly. He got straight back to the point. "Knockout is not the only defector currently living on this base. You've got Soundwave too? He's been released from lock up status awhile back and has living quarters in here?"

"Yes," Arcee sighed right along with her answer. The young bot was beginning to shout again, and even though it was obvious he was at least trying to keep his temper under control, it only served to aggravate her all over again.

"Third in command under the most feared tyrannical ruler in Cyberton's history. And you're just going to let him peacefully defect from his faction? He's just some bot now? Just another Cybertronian with a clean slate and a future?"

Arcee's already unusually bad mood, gave way to outright anger at the young warrior as he let the volume of his voise rise the more he shouted at her in what she considered to be blatant disrespect. And for a moment, it was all she could do not to either shout right back, waning him to watch his mouth, or to simply turn and stomp off the other way in her own spurt of head shaking and mumbling under intakes. For another moment she only stared the young Autobot in the optics, challenging him wordlessly to just to dare to continue on with his yelling at a carrying bot in a testy mood, and see what he'd get for his trouble. But as she continued to stare at his optics, she slowly began to see the bewildered confusion, behind the young bot's defiance.

He was just another young soldier, not unlike Smokescreen, or Bumblebee or countless more still scattered over endless space and trying to get home. Young Autobots that barely knew a life at all, outside of war and hate, of factions and loyalties. This young bot, was just one more, like so many others, born to a world already at what, made to choose a faction, hating the other side, all without knowing what exactly what it was he fought for, or what exactly it was that he hated in the first place. A world where a bot could be so much more than his faction, was a place he did not even understand.

"Anyone deserves a chance to start over," Arcee said simply. The anger and frustration that had been steadily building left at once and she smiled at the kid. A genuine smile this time.

"It looks like Knockout's been around here a while. Apparently he's never betrayed the Autobots. Besides, he was just a medic. Fine. Whatever. I'll leave him alone. But why exactly should anyone trust Soundwave as far as any of us can throw him. He could murder any of of us in our recharge without blinking an optic. He's… Soundwave! We should be locking up every good for nothing 'con we can catch, and throwing the keys into the smelting pit. Let those bots rust in their cells for everything they did..."

"It isn't nearly that simple. This is a new world now. We can't rebuild it on anger and revenge. That won't work. Besides, every bot alive today deserves a chance to seek their own redemption. A chance for us all to just be simple bots again and learn to work together… that's exactly what Optimus Prime would have wanted for Cybertron. Soundwave wanted the war to end just as much as we did. So many of the 'cons were just as tired of the fighting as we were. And I'm not sure that most of them knew exactly what it was we were fighting for in the end anymore either."

Still walking the corridor and maintaining his steady pace beside his follow Autobot, Sideswipe looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he smiled slightly with the thought of the future, before his optics took on that same confused and baffled look again.

"What about Starsceam?" He asked, after another moment.

"What about him?" Arcee questioned back at once. She laughred very slightly, but the look she gave the younger bot reveled just how little she knew exactly what it was he meant to ask in his simple question.

"Are we giving him the same clean slate and a chance at redemption too?"

"That's..." Arcee began to answer slowly, without a real clue how she should or even could answer that question. "That's far more complicated. I wish I could say I believed he himself wanted that. But in any case, our duty to Cybertron will be to rid society of any bot that continues to interfere with our goal of lasting peace."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

It was still very early in the morning. Arcee sensed that with no doubt at all, before she even opened her optics. When she finally forced herself to do so through all of her lingering tiredness, a pair of wide open red optics, met hers.

"How long have you been awake?" She questioned slowly. She raised her head a little, only after realizing she was mumbling nearly inaudibly into her bondmate's shoulder panel.

Knockout considered a second before his face-place showed a tiny hint of a smile at her.

"Couldn't be more than a couple of minutes." He mumbled an answer, so clearly just as tired as she was and possibly far more so. But at least he managed to smile even if barely. And Arcee, taking a decent lesson from him, made herself do so too.

"Bad recharge last night," Knockout said, still mumbling his words a little, as Arcee shifted herself again so that she could sit up on their recharge station with her legs straight out in front of her. She nodded her conformation.

Last night had been a terrible night for the pair, as some nights simply just were. They must have each been in recharge for only several moments, before Knockout had drifted away into flashbacks or some terrible nightmare, and had quickly, and quite unintentionally woken Arcee back up again, with his screaming in terror at something she could never see or understand. She'd decided not to wake him up, since he stopped again quickly enough. And for a short while he was fine again. But it was only a short time before he was trembling badly, with tears pouring from his closed optics in the darkness and refusing to fully wake up, even when she frantically shook him.

For him to roll himself over to one side, took some conscious desire to move, and a fair amount of voluntary physical effort on his part. It was hardly something he could simply do just barely awake and barely trying to. So, acting instinctively, doing only what made even a hint of logical sense to do, she'd managed at some point in the night to put both her arms over top of his frame, hold lightly over the right side of his body and pull him toward her, so that he rolled into a new position, laying on one side and slowly drifting away from the dream as she lay against him again. The pair had recharged a short while then, but it was only a matter of time before he began screaming again, louder than before, coolant tears still streaming down his face-plate in the darkness, while he struggled in his confusion to shove her away from him with a barely functional left arm and a right that shook violently in the rough direction of something he was convinced he saw in front of him.

"You okay?" Arcee asked. She gave another little smile. And instead of moving to get up, though she felt like she ought to, she flopped over flat onto her back and straightened her legs, taking a second to simply enjoy stretching a bit.

"I… I'm fine now," Knockout answered slowly. At first his voice sounded almost too hesitant. But slowly the tiny smile on his face brightened and his optics showed that he meant it.

"Do you remember much of last night?" Arcee asked slowly.

"Barely," Knockout shook his head hesitantly, and said no more about it. Slowly, cautiously and clearly appearing himself to lack any real motivation to move, he flung his right arm back up over the side of his frame, forced his body into as much of a turn as possible, and rolled onto his back, steadying himself on a bent right elbow. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Arcee answered, and she really did mean it. With a slight roll of her optics and a little groan under her intakes, she mumbled, "My bad recharge last night was hardly all your fault anyway. I would have been up in the night regardless."

"Has our newspark started to keep you awake?"

"I… I think so. I've never carried before, so I don't know what it's supposed to feel like this late..." Arcee moved a little to lay closer to her mate again. "I feel something almost constantly now inside my spark chamber. It just fluttered a bit at first. Last night though it was more than just a little steady fluttering..."

Knockout didn't say anything. But he was looking at her intently, his optics telling her without any words at all to go on.

"I'm sure I can feel the little spark spinning in there now. It's the strangest feeling ever."

"The little spark is about as big as it's ever going to be now as a first frame youngling," Knockout explained with a tone of sympathetic understanding. He moved to pull her closer to him with his functional arm. "Her movement will have slowed a little now, but she's still moving fast in that same constant spin. It'll be causing a fair bit of pressure in your chamber by now."

"It is," Arcee said. "And I can only imagine it'll just get worst from here."

"Not as much as you might think actually. She's not going to get much bigger if she grows at all. And the speed of her motion will slow down more yet."

"Just matter then of waiting it out… resting and waiting for her to be born… Hard to believe we're this far now so fast."

"Time certainly can fly."

For a moment neither of them said anything more. Arcee moved again on the recharge station, so that she could lay tightly pressed against her mate's body armor. And for a coupe of moments she just stayed like that, silently limbs growing tense, and her face hidden against her mate's red shoulder panel.

"Arcee?" Knockout said, his tone clearly questioning, when another long moment went by without her moving or saying a word. Hesitantly he moved his arm away from her to see if she would move. And slowly she did, she shift if his position, causing her to lift her head a little to look at him in concern.

He saw the strange and sudden look of nervous anxiety in her optics as soon as she looked up. And she knew she had never had a real hope of hiding that from him for a second.

"Please talk to me," he urged gently. "Arcee's what the matter?"

Arcee moved again so that she could sit up on the recharge station. For a second she just sat looking down at her mate while he lay looking up at her with concern on his face-plate. He looked just as half way to helpless as ever. But still in his optics she saw his respect and concern and love for her. His look reminded her just how, while he was still so limited in just how much he could do, he still liked to listen to her. He wanted her to talk to him. His silence and intently staring barely blinking optics reminded her of that much.

"The closer we get now, the more nervous I get," she said, speaking honestly. One of her hands reached for one of his, and he reached at once to take it.

"What about?" he questioned slowly. His optics still showed such intent interest and true concern. In that second she recalled a time the two of them had been more than delighted with the idea of killing either other with a charged energon staff and a pair of hand blasters, over possession of ridiculous relics, and a simple difference of opinion taught over years of warfare. She reflected on just how hard it was to believe that either one of them were really the same two bots anymore.

"Parenthood scares me a bit," she said slowly, and managed a tiny chuckle through her still growing anxiety. "A tiny helpless bot, depending on us for everything… to meet her every need, to teach her to be good, whats right and what's wrong... I know how to fight, and shoot, command troops and plan out battle strategy. But none of that ever taught me how to relate to a child. What if I just don't love her enough?"

"You love her enough already," Knockout said with understanding. "We both do. And she's not even an independently existing spark yet. I can only imagine that feeling will be so much more when we finally see that little frame take on it's colors and start to move. The first time we hear her cry… or laugh..."

When Arcee's optics began to fill with coolant tears, Knockout pulled her toward him as well as he could with his one strong enough arm, gently urging her to lay back down beside him, before she could stare down at the covers on the recharge station.

"Just thinking more and more about the whole process of spark separation, is making me nervous," she said. Her voice was quiet as she lay against him again. "And then I feel bad for that, because I feel like that's ridiculous and silly."

"It's not silly."

"I know there's been cases anywhere in history of newsparks dying out when they should have merged into their first frames instead. Carriers have offlined too..."

"Well that's not exactly commonplace," Knockout said quickly. But still he knew he could never lie to her, and the simple omition of detail was little better than lying. "Yes, there are things that can and do go very wrong. But they generally don't. And Ratchet is just too good and stubborn and committed of a medic to fail to save either one of you if he needed act fast."

"If something did go wrong.." Arcee said, moving to look him in the optics again. Her voice was entirely serious, and tried hard through the look on her face-plate to tell him just how important this was to her. "I know it's almost impossible for something to go wrong. But almost impossible is not a guaranteed 'never going to happen, so let's not even talk about this.' If something terrible did happen... If I was the one in seven-thousand carriers who went offline in spark separation, or anytime really, for any reason..." Arcee paused a moment and moved to place her hand over her spark chamber, in a vague gesture indicating the presence of the newspark. Her optics went on staring, intent and unblinking at her mate. "Knockout, please say you would love her more than enough for both of us, raise her to be strong and smart and as funny as you are. Please say that you would always do your best..."

"Of course I would," Knockout smiled his genuine assurance. And that was enough to make Arcee smile back at him again. Through the connection she shared with him, she sensed that he did not want to simply agree like that. She knew that instead he wanted to assure with with stats and facts and figures and piles of complex medical terminology, that her concern was all but unfounded. But it was not necessary and she knew that he knew that. The simple agreement from him, made her anxiety lessen and then quickly fade entirely. And she knew he sensed that too.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, flopping over s that she could lay on her back again. She looked up toward the ceiling with another groan under her intakes, and shook her head a little. "I know I'm being ridiculous. I'm just neurotic, and moody. and terrible to deal with..."

"And tired partly because of my bad night, stressed from working when you should be resting far more, probably tired of carrying... and still just as beautiful as ever by the way, regardless." Knockout grinned his increasing familiar grin.

Slowly, and beganning to smile again at him at him, calmer and assured, Arcee sat up on the recharge station, and then finally moved to stand up on the floor beside it.

"Do you wanna sit up?" she asked. Her optics moved slightly toward the grab bars that had been recently installed at the side and above the recharge station. He was becoming quite capable now of using the bars to sit himself up on the recharge station, just as long as he still had a little bit of help.

He nodded slowly, clearly seeking his own motivation to actually get up. And Arcee reached for the overhead bar, and pulled it hard on it's sliding track, so that she could then lock it into place with a firm tug, into a position above his arms. He reached up easily enough with his right arm, held onto the bar with his hand, and as soon as Arcee had carefully moved his left arm, so that he could grab the bar beside him, somewhat awkwardly wedging his hand under it and grabbing it as well as he could, he was able to pull himself up to sitting.

Holding the bar now in front of him with his right hand, and the one mounted beside the recharge station awkwardly with the left, he held himself up in a seated position with both legs straight in front of him, the right bent slightly at the knee for comfort and balance. He stayed that way, obviously happy enough to be upright now that he'd mananged to get there, while Arcee hurried to the wash station to bring him a wash rag as she'd taken to doing each morning.

"Do you think Starscream would ever defect, and mean it?" She questioned slowly, thoughtfully, speaking over the sound of the running water.

For a second, Knockout appeared visibly surprised by her strange question as she peeked around the door to look at him. But then he shook his head, and still holding his balance, he managed a tiny shrugging motion the best way he could. "I don't imagine there's even enough left of the 'cons to even defect from. From what Soundwave tells us…"

"You knew Starscream better than any Autobot," Arcee said with determination. She added a small amount of cleaning solvent to the wet rag, tossed the bottle of the stuff back onto the counter top, and left the wash station again with the rag balled up in her hand. "Do you personally think he might just be capable of real redemption?"

"Arcee? Did something happen? Something to cause this sudden concern over this?"

"Not really. Just… a new arrival was asking questions yesterday. I gave the best answer I could, but it's had me thinking ever since."

"Hmm..." Knockout said thoughtfully, and his look said that he was carefully considering his answer. Still, even while so intently thinking and conversing with her, he did a fine job of holding himself up in his sitting position. His hands still held onto the bars, but it was obvious that was only for the most part, because he did not yet fully trust himself not to fall. With only slight hesitation he carefully let go, so that he could reach for the washrag. "His reputation certainly proceeded him anywhere in the galaxy. He must surely be hated anywhere just as much as Megatron. I used to fear him just as much as I feared Megatron himself. I told you once about an assault against me, involving his prized fighting sword… He was a broken bot, Arcee. Now that I'm away from at all, and have been for a while, I can see, looking back, just how bad it really was. You'd probably laugh if I told you he was actually quite a brilliant bot. Strategy, weapons design, communications… Megatron set him up to fail, made him look stupid just a little bit to often, and taught the troops to laugh when he made a simple mistake, until finally the only thing we ever really noticed were the mistakes and increasingly hair brained screw ups. And then our psychotic leader would corner him in the hall ways drag him away somewhere and take his own rage at the failing war effort out on him with fists and insults, until survival took so much effort that brilliance meant nothing.

"No one knows exactly where Starscream actually came from. You could ask ten 'cons and get fifteen answers. We've got to assume he was recruited helplessly young. There are conflicting rumors… Some bots say he lied about his age after his creators died and joined the cause because he had nowhere to go. Others have said before that Megatron killed his creators and stole him away from his home city before he even got his adult frame, having hand picked a young one to raise as the next leader should he ever be brought down. Either way, it was obvious by the time I got there, that he was only kept alive, to serve as someone to beat on, to blame, and yell at. Someone who had barely lived long enough before the war to have ever learned to fight back."

"The Autobots have tried far more than once to be tolerant of him, to show compassion, to offer to help..." Arcee mumbled out loud, with her emotions in a such a mix that she barely knew if she was supposed to be angry sad, or just indifferent over the whole matter. "Optimus Prime in particular was determined to be compassionate toward him. In so many battles I fought beside him, I've lost count long ago, I noticed so many times, how hesitant he always was to aim to soot fatal shots at Starscream. Bringing down the second in command could have given us a chance at wining the war ages ago. But he would always so obviously have preferred to just knock his jet mode out of the sky alive and barely damaged. He never said it to anyone, never spoke abut this out loud at all ever, but it was never any secret anyway that one of Prime's greatest dreams would always have been to see Starscream defect from the 'cons. Even now, with nothing left to really defect from, I tend to think that where ever he is, where ever it is his spark ended up, he might finally get a real smile on that ever serious face-plate of his, just to finally hear him say he wants to walk away from everything he was taught to believe, and help us rebuild Cybertron instead."

"I'll be honest Arcee. I'm not sure I'd want to see you get your hopes up too high..."

A couple of loud knocks on the outside of the door, made Arcee realize that she had forgotten all about the usual and to be expected morning visit from someone sent to get Knockout onto his cart. She looked from him to the door and back again, and when he laughed clearly realizing what she was thinking, she only gave a laugh too. Hurrying to grab the cart and pull it toward the recharge station after unplugging it, she yelled toward the door, at whoever was in the hall, to come in and help.

She was expecting to find Bulkhead waiting to come in and help with the job. Ratchet had been sending him a lot lately. He was efficient with it, considerably larger and heavier than Knockout and able to easily lift him. And he'd never had any problem with moving him, once he'd gotten over his initial quite unjustified worry that he could damage the dysfunctional bot simply by trying to move him. But instead, Ratchet stood in the hallway that morning, and from the look on his face-plate, the stress and defeat of te past days seemed to have lifted at least a little.

"Well would you look at that," he said, his optics right on Knockout at once. A slight grin formed on his face-plate then as he stepped into the room. "You're getting better and better with using those bars to sit yourself up."

"I'll admit I hated it at first," Knockout said in response. His optics dropped slightly to look toward the floor, but he finally moved to let go of his hold on the bar locked in place in front of him, and just continued to sit up well enough that way.

Arcee chuckled slightly under her intakes, nodding in agreement and conforming to the old medic, exactly what it was her mate had said. The set of bars over and next to the recharge station had had him quite visibly upset the first night after he'd seen that they had been installed for him to began to learn to use. He'd certainly spent some time grumbling about how it looked just plain terrible, and how he hardly wanted either himself or his mate living in a room that resembled a rehabilitation facility – that the parked cart, plugged in to charge in the far corner was bad enough. Then there had been frustrated head shaking, long moments of so obviously nearly crying in despair at the implications of permanence yet again, and then complete and utter refusal to even try using the new equipment. The despair had quickly disappeared though, and the well known stubbornness with it. And when he finally started to really try, he clearly liked the new level of freedom in being able to sit and move, and even learn to balance while reaching for nearby objects.

"Next step from there..." Ratchet mused, considering, "would be for you to get yourself on and off the cart." His slight smile grew in confidence. "Let's work on that one a while. No time like the present."

"You really think I…?" For all of his past annoyance and upset over the grab bars, Knockout grinned instead at this newly presented challenge.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Arcee had been first concerned and a little panicked when she'd finally unpacked the little recharging basket, she'd purchased for her awaited youngling, and found several small pieces and a bag full of tiny nuts and bolts in the package. But Speedbreaker had built Knockout's mobility cart without even a blueprint and only a rough idea in her processor of how one was supposed to look. When Arcee had quickly remembered that and thought to ask for help, the little basket had been put together in moments. And now both bot femmes stood in Arcee and Knockout's room, looking over the simple metal basket on it's adjustable and detachable stand, both grinning about the cuteness of the thing.

"Thanks for the help with this, Speedy," Arcee said, meaning it sincerely. "I tell you, there is nothing a bot's ever learned on the front lines of battle, that would ever tell you how to possibly assemble a recharging basket..."

"No problem at all," Speedbreaker answered quickly. She looked the basket over and laughed a little with a smile on her face-plate and a slightly disbelieving shake of her head. "This is such a tiny thing to recharge in. It's hard to believe she'll fit in there."

"She'll fit," Arcee said, with her own little laugh. "Hard to believe, but yeah.. a first frame really is that small."

Her anxious and overwhelmed mood of the morning had been all but forgotten as the hours passed throughout the day. And by now, she was smiling brightly, thoroughly enjoying the sunshine that poured in through the little window at the far side of the living space, and just loving the feeling of anticipating the fast approaching arrival of a brand new youngling of her very own.

She hurried across the room then to grab a package containing tiny bedding that she had bought a good while before, and had stashed neatly on a shelf inside a storage cabinet. Grinning her excitement about it, she hurried back toward the little recharging basket, and proceeded decorate it nicely with the new bedding.

"That's so cute," Speedbreaker remarked, smiling with a strange look over her face-plate. Arcee may not have known Speedy all that well yet, but still it was obvious that even though she was still very young, she'd began to daydream about a youngling of her own. Arcee may not have known Speedbreaker all that well. But she did know Bumblebee. And remembering how he'd been on Earth with young humans, she could well image the young pair with a considerable handful of young ones tumbling around a crowded but happy apartment over the next century, all while he learned the medical field.

"You picked out such a pretty color," Speedy said after a moment. "Pink and white is a lovely combination."

"Its a bit of an Earth thing actually," Arcee chuckled. She was almost slightly embarrassed at her love for such a silly tradition, and one that had no real relevance at all on Cybertron. Little baby girls in pink, and little baby boys in blue… Maybe I just miss the human race, but pink and white were the only colors I even thought about when I went shopping." She shook her head slightly and chuckled out loud. "Knockout's memories of Earth were so different than mine. When I explained the pink and blue thing to him, he told me, if he had been the one to shop for bedding with Earth on the processor, the youngling would have black and white checkered bedding to resemble a car racing flag."

"A fair enough consideration for the next one," Speedbreaker grinned, laughing but a little too serious in her statement.

"No," Arcee said seriously, shaking her head a little. Her hand went, almost unconsciously to rest against her spark chamber and she smiled slightly. "We love this one already. There are no regrets about her creation. But still this was an accident, however happy that little accident might just make us. And with a mate as physically limited as Knockout is, just chasing after one will be hard on him, no matter how much he loves to do it. And helping him with anything he just can't do while juggling even one little one is enough. We decided together that she will be it for us. To have any more… well it just might not be fair to any of them."

"This little one of yours is important, even if there is ever only one of her," Speedbreaker observed smiling her understanding. "A child born to an Autobot and a former 'con… she'll represent something big... significant..."

"True," Arcee said, agreeing happily. She'd thought about that herself, more than once, and the idea made her smile every time.

"Have you ever wondered yet what color her optics will be. From what I've been reading about optic colors and the coding responsible, both red and blue might just be equally dominant codes, so in the case of one red and one blue optic'd bot, the optics of any offspring have about a fifty-fifty chance of either color..."

Arcee didn't answer. But she knew that Speedbreaker was very right in her information. Some research of her own, and a conversation with Ratchet at one point had confirmed that already. And silently she secretly hoped her youngling's optics, when they took on color along with her frame, would be blue like her own were. She looked to the future, however distant and imagined a time when just like in centuries long past and all but forgotton, the color of a bot's optics wouldn't matter anymore in the least. But that time was not now. And she feared to think of the discrimination a red optic'd youngling might just face on the newly restored Cybertron.

"The grab bars seem to be holding up just fine," Speedbreaker said after a moment, changing the topic away from the one that had clearly died uncomfortably in the air. She walked over toward the recharge station and tugged a little on first one and then the other, of the bars she had done most fo the work in installing, taking the perfectly opportunity to make sure they were indeed still safe and steady as she'd promised the set up would be.

"Not a single problem with them since you installed everything," Arcee nodded slightly. "And thank you for doing that job for us too by the way. Knockout is pulling himself up to sitting pretty well on his own now most days."

"Wow," Speedbreaker smiled.

"He's started learning to transfer to the cart by himself this morning. I've told him to be pateirnt with himself about it. Ratchet's said the same thing. But still he's utterly insistent he'll have the skill completely down by next week. I worry because he sets his goals so high and then gets so down when he fails to meet them on time, though he tried so hard..."

The door to her living space slid open before Arcee finish putting her thoughts into words. She turned around to watch Knockout roll his cart across the room at a speed slightly fast for an indoor space, and with a grin on his face-plate like she had never seen before. She shook her head in baffled disbelief when due likely only to his speed, he clipped a floor lamp with his front left wheel as he turned to get around the recharge station, and sent it crashing to the floor. Still he just went on grinning.

"What the frag has gotten into you?" Arcee asked him, laughing and shaking her head, while she picked up the knocked over lamp.

"Shockwave is in contact with this base," Knockout said, speaking fast and still grinning over something that seemed a strange thing to be happy about. "He contacted 'Bee during a comm shift not long ago."

"Well he's got some nerve," Arcee mumbled back, frowning to hide a snarl of anger, even as her mate went on strangely smiling over the situation. "What's that dirty 'con want?"

Arcee knew, the second the words had left her mouth, that they may have just been a little out of line. She was rushing to conclusions, fired up and looking for a fight before the risk of one even stood in front of her. She remembered, much to her regret, a day she had mumbled much the same about Knockout, some time after he joined the Autobots… before she called him a friend. But it was in her very nature she felt, to think first with her fists and battle changed spark, and only later with her processor, perhaps too late and after the fact. Suddenly disliking her own tendency toward quick tempered impulsiveness due to anger, she forced away the biting annoyance and assumed an air of professional maturity.

"He's prepared to give himself up, and bargain with us for his continued freedom," Knockout said. He still grinned, but at least now the reason was beginning to make some sense. "Ratchet's stepped in to negotiate. Maybe, just maybe, if we play this right, we get take out Starscream and end the war entirely."

"What?" Arcee's optics open wide in surprise, and at the edge of her vision, she saw Speedbreaker, looking at both of them with confusion on her face-plate and baffled by the whole situation. "Shockwave would never reach out to the Autobots, and he'd certainly never want to bargain for a thing."

"You're wrong Arcee," Knockout answered seriusly. The grin left his face-plate then, but he did continue to smile a little at her even through his sudden bluntness. Not a second later though the grin was back, and he reached out to grab his bondmate's hand with his stronger one. For a second he just sat still on the mobility cart swinging her hand playfully in front of his seated frame and grinning. "I know how much you clearly wanted to see Starscream defect from the 'cons. I know this isn't quite the same, but it's something big, and it's a start!"


	33. Chapter 33

"Arcee, you really should resting the evening away in a warm oil bath, not racing through the hallways ready to join in on these negotiations," Knockout protested adamantly. He drove his cart at the same slightly too fast pace on the return trip back on the common room, as he had on his way to talk to his mate in their living space. He hadn't expected that she would follow him back to the gathered members of their team, and that she would fly at once right back into Autobot officer mode of thinking. But he knew he should hardly be surprised that she had done exactly that.

"Today we might either gain one more ally that could win us the war once and for all, or we've got a brutal and vicious 'con with reputation for worse than Starscreams's loose somewhere on Cybertron," Arcee answered, hurriedly. She walked beside him and the rolling cart with quick steps. "If this is a trap set by a rampaging 'con on the loose – and it may well be – I need to get a feel for exactly what it is we're dealing with." She gave her mate a playful light smack of her hand against his right arm while he drove his cart. And her stubborn blue optics felt like they would burn holes through his armor as she stared him down intently. "And you think I'm just gong to go… chill out in the bathtub?"

"Just be… careful..." Knockout said, helplessly. He inwardly berated himself a bit, thinking he should have known exactly what she would do, if he decided to clue her in on the possible situation.

Instead of replying, Arcee only nodded so slightly he would have missed it completely had he not known her well enough to catch the tiny subtle motion. She did take a second though to look at him while they made their way together down the corridor, and smile a little, with a look in her optics that told him how grateful she was to him for accepting her stubborn determination.

Ratchet was seated in a chair in front of the comm screen, with Bumblebee close behind him, when Knockout and Arcee got back to the common room. Other members of the team sat or stood nearby, watching listening, and clearly ready to jump in and take action if and when they needed to.

"So, what's the story?" Arcee demanded, not impolitely, but still every bit professional all the same. She walked to the comm scream from the door to the room, in a few long and quick, no nonsense strides.

"Shockwave has reaffirmed his intentions to bargain with us for his freedom," Bumblebee quickly explained. "He's adamant about it. Never once changed a single detail of his story. He and Starscream are not exactly seeing optic to optic. He accepts that Megatron is never coming back. Better to walk away then pursue a lost cause forever."

"Ha. If he can walk away without getting arrested and treated as a war criminal, so much the better for him from his perspective," Ratchet put in, without turning away from the comm station. "Shockwave is far from stupid. He must know full well his best bet is to willingly defect at this point."

"So where's he comm'ing us from in the first place?" Arcee stepped closer, considering carefully. "Have you been able to track it?"

"I didn't need to track it. He gave his coordinates before we even asked for them. I did double check to confirm, and it lined up perfectly." Ratchet looked up then from his work, and his optics fixed right on the young officer. All at once his professional matter of fact giving of information turned to his well known huffing, as she gave her a look that could surely have made any other bot shudder in their frame. "Arcee, sit your tail pipe down at once!"

One serious and warning glance from Ratchet, around the room at the gathered bots, made them all look around them urgently for something comfortable to bring over for Arcee to sit down on. Quite unexpectedly, it ended up being Soundwave, standing at edge of the corridor on the furthest side of the room, out of the way and lost, but still obviously doing no harm with his presence, who ran fast across the room, snatched up an easily portable lightweight chair folded against the wall, and set it down fast behind her.

"I told her to be careful. First I told her she shouldn't even be here at all..." Knockout urgently explained to Ratchet, while he nodded quick unspoken thanks to Soundwave, for thinking to fetch his mate a chair.

"Ha!" The old medic shook his head just slightly while he huffed again under his intakes. "Good luck to you there, my friend. You've surely loved her long enough now to know how hard headed she is when she gets it in her processor to do..." He never finished voicing that thought of his out loud. But instead turned to look at Acree again, with unblinking optics that said he would not hear a word of argument of her,. With one finger he pointed right at the chair, and commanded in his old non nonsense medic voice, "sit!"

"What's Shockwave's current location?" Arcee questioned, as she sat down in the chair, close to the comm station.

"At the North-eastern edge of the Sea of Rust," Ratchet explained. He lightly tapped a finger against a map he'd quickly pulled up over the comm screen, explaining everything to her and any of the gathered team around them. "There's a range of small mountains out there, and it seemed to me that his comm signal came from inside a mountain of sulfur. When I questioned it, Shockwave himself confirmed it. He's identified one of his hidden laboratories, inside a chamber concealed inside the mountain itself."

"Shockwave has sworn on every spark to enter the well before us, that his intention is not to trap us," Bumblebee said, still standing behind the old medic. "He says he only wishes to talk with the bot or bots that are selected to represent the Autobot army, and he stated no clear preference even for who might be sent." The young bot paused for a second shaking his head lightly. "Of course nothing about any of that guarantees in any way that we can actually trust him..."

"Personally I feel like this may be worth pursuing," Ratchet commented. "With safely in mind, and battle protocols in place of course."

"I say we finish him off once and for all," Bulkhead grumbled from across the room. He slammed his large green fists together, to further emphasize his point.

"He gave us directions right to his front door. That 'con's practically asking us to come and carry out his execution," Smokescreen said. He and Bulk' exchanged serious looks at one another, and traded subtle nods and agreeing glances.

"I can't help but think, about what Optimus would tell us to do," Bumblebee interjected. "We all know full well that if he were here he'd want to hear him out, learn his side of the story before deciding his fate."

"'Bee's right," Arcee said firmly. The little group of bots gathered around the room began to murmur their agreement, some far more hesitantly than others. And when they had once again fallen silent, she quickly stood up from her chair, jumping to her feet in one single motion, before she stepped forward, with her face-plate set in a look of determination. "I need a ground bridge."

"Ah no," Ratchet answered back at once. Turning around again, he gave Knockout a look of understanding, as the red bot begged with his optics for him to put a stop to his mate's obvious determination to take on this mission herself. "Arcee, you are going to sit back down in that chair this instant, and take part in electing the bots that will go and deal with this!" Just in case his point was not clear enough, the old bot pointed again to the chair and glared at her until she reluctantly sat herself back down on it."

"I'm willing to go," 'Bee said, when no other bot seemed in any hurry to volunteer for the meeting.

"I'm willing to go with him," 'Bulk said, finally stepping forward himself. He slammed his fists together again and scowled.

"Actually, if no one objects, I think I'd like to take this mission myself." Ratchet declared. He stood up from his seat at the comm screen with a look of confidence on his face-plate."

"You, Ratchet?" Bulkhead sounded so clearly shocked and disbelieving.

"Yes, me," the old bot half replied and half snapped with a shaking head, and more than a tiny bit of huffing under his intakes. "I'm good for more than just fixing up your sorry afts ya know. I fought as hard as anybot in the war for Cybertron. I may be an old bot, but I'm not rusted yet." He looked around at the gathered group of his teammates, and then stared for a second straight ahead of him, with optics fixed into a look of finality. "And I think Shockwave might just have something I can use. I fully intend to ask him for it."

"Fine," Arcee nodded, agreeing without protest. She did the best she could to maintain control from her place sitting in a folding chair, and felt almost ridiculous about it at that. "Works for me. Ratchet; your mission then. Assemble a team, and show that 'con you've still got what it takes." She smiled then, and the old bot smiled a little right back at her.

"'Bee," Ratchet said, his head turning fast in the direction the young bot. "Still interested in going?"

"Sure," the young black and yellow bot nodded. "Just give me a second. I need to find Speedbreaker."

"Wheeljack. I think I could use you too," Ratchet said firmly. His optics glanced fast around the room. "A former wrecker might actually come in hardy in this case. And as much as we all know I never did like to admit it, you are good at quick thinking on your feet."

"Oh wow, thanks Doc," Wheeljack said with a laugh and an uncharacteristic grin. He stepped forward, that alone implying his acceptance of the mission. "If I didn't know any better, I might just take that as your own personal respect for me and my skill set."

"Don't you go pushing your luck," the old medic huffed right back at him. But under his intakes he was clearly chuckling just slightly over the wisecrack from his teammate.

"Knockout..."

"Ground bridge. I'm on it..." Knockout answered quickly. He rolled his cart forward, to park in a place close to the ground bridge control. His functional hand was on the keyboard in a second, and with awkward yet still surprising efficiently one handed typing of commands, he pulled up the coordinates on the screen and then just as quickly rerouted them to the bridge control.

The damaged red defector, had began to fill the post of ground bridge and comms operator more and more often. And since the post had quickly proven to be one that he could fill just as well as any able bodied bot – perhaps better than some, because he actually quite liked the post that so many disliked – anyone on base was generally happy just to let him have the job.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

When Ratchet left the ground bridge, he found himself outside, under Cybertron's open sky above him. He had emerged close too a large and tall mountain, one of several such mountains on his world, and formed of layers of various colorful metals that shone in the light of the sun. A high wind blew, as the wind so often did over that empty regain of the planet. And it seemed it only grew stronger within seconds of hits arrival, whipping over the flat land and stopped only by the mountain in front of him. One mighty gust took him almost off of his feet entirely, and he braced himself with his frame firmly planted, before he could crash to the ground.

"This is some wind out here," Wheeljack commented uselessly, as soon as he had left the bridge with Bumblebee right behind him.

Ratchet only huffed a wordless response, in frustration with his teammate's statement of the obvious, and took a careful step forward, toward the mountain and pushed forward horribly by the wind.

"So, what's this something or other, you think Shockwave might just have for you to demand he give you, Doc?" Wheeljack questioned, his tone calm and a little too casual, as he walked froward himself, appearing to do far better with moving, given the wind speed and his smaller size.

"You'll find out," Ratchet snapped, grumbling. "And stop calling me 'Doc!'"

"Whatever you wish, Champ," Wheeljack retorted at once.

Ratchet turned around to face him. Both of his optics glared with a bright blue, and he clenched his hands into fists in his annoyance.

"I'd watch it if I were you," Bumblebee said to the white wrecker. "Ratchet may be an old cranky bot, but he can still swing that wrench of his. And no doubt he's got it with him, too."

"You better believe I do, kid," Ratchet snapped, thinking instantly of the trusty old wrench of his, that he had tossed quickly into his storage compartment before leaving the base.

For a second he thought about telling his youngest teammate off for calling him an old cranky bot. And the fact that the kid had not actually said a thing that was technically all that untrue at all, did little to make a bit of difference. But 'Bee always could get away with things that few Autobots ever could have. And after another second, and another near stumble as the wind gusted hard again, the old medic only found himself shaking his head almost in amusement at the young one's comment, which was clearly intended to be only in good fun.

"So, how do we get in there?" Wheeljack asked, a moment later. His tone was serious now and clearly he was focused again on the mission. He glanced around at his teammates the flat plain extending far beyond the range of their vision on three sides, and at the huge imposing mountain before them. "Or, do we get in there at all?"

"Hmm…." Ratchet mused, considering. "I'll admit I'm not entirely sure yet. We'll give it a minute… see what happens.."

He may have presently been in the role of team leader, but leadership in situations outside of anything medical or scientific was generally not his strongest point. Nor was it typically something he particularly enjoyed as a rule. He had only placed himself in the position of doing so now, because a strong and specific motivation drove him to.

A dull rumble began suddenly, and the ground began to tremble around them, before the old bot had even a second more to decide on his next course of action. All three of the bots moved to look toward the source of the upheaval, and they watched a mall section of the metal mountain give way, sliding back on itself, and reveling a passage that had only a moment before been entirely invisible to them. Shockwave rolled straight out of his mountain hideout in his tank form. And he transformed into his bot mode, his single optic looming over the little group, as the shaking of the ground stopped.

"Shockwave, good day to you," Ratchet said. He moved at first to extend a hand toward the other bot, before he remembered that not every bot on Cybertron understood or had any wish to take part in the human inspired idea of hand shaking. He lowered his hand again. "You're looking well."

"I lack any interest in your Autobot pleasantries," Shockwave mumbled, glaring down at the medic.

"Well, he's just as charming of a fellow as ever," Wheeljack whispered to Bumblebee, while both of them stood a slight ways behind their teammate.

"Very well," Ratchet said, to the imposing bot before him. He stood up straighter and made himself get right to business. "First things first then. You will give your word from one bot to another and face to face that your intention is not to set us up to fall right into a trap?"

"Would the word of a Decepticon mean a thing to an Autobot?" Shockwave questioned quickly. His tone implied that he was considering, genuinely wondering.

"Yes, yes, I do think it would." Ratchet's answer as honest, and he could only hope the other bot would understand and believe that.

"I give my word, Autobot. This is no trap."

"Well then, on behalf of my faction, I extend to you the same offer we have to many of yours already. Defect willinging, turn your back on for your Decepticon loyalty and affiliation, and help us to build a new world and make it what I think we all know it should have been to begin with."

"I no longer have a single hint of loyalty to my faction," Shockwave declared with a slight hint of a snarl. "My own needs and desires cannot possibly be satisfied through service to a failing cause that crumbles more with each passing day."

"Your needs could be met by turning to us for help," Bumblebee offered, stepping forward with confidence as he spoke up. "You would be provided with housing, given employment in a job to match your skill..."

"Is that what you think I want, Autobot?" Shockwave unexpected growled. He took several fast and heavy steps toward the young bot, with his optic blazing in his clear frustration. "To live out my days stacked among two hundred neighbors inside one of your tin can high rises? To give my scientific skill and my time, my very spark to some employer all so that I may in turn earn a wage with which to pay for the privilege of continued survival?"

"What is it you do want?" Ratchet tried next.

"This!" Shockwave gestured around him, at the emty ground in any direction and toward the mountain behind him with its one hidden door now standing wide open on a wide dark and empty passage that seemed to lead deeper inside. "This is what I want. What I've always wanted. Isolation. Silence. A place to dedicate my life to the pursuit of scientific discovery."

"Then stay here," Ratchet said. He stepped close to the much larger bot, and even smiled slightly with assurance and approval of his strange, but still understandable desires. "I see little reason that could not work. At least for the foreseeable future."

The old medic had not asked the opinions of his team on the possibility of such an outcome. But in his spark he felt like what he had offered was right. And beside him he saw 'Bee, young but fast becoming looked to by many as a leader among their people, nod his head in silent agreement with offer. Wheeljack, still standing further back, only looked confused by that point and would easily agree with anything said within reason.

"What could be in it for you?" Shockwave asked, seriously. He stood staring from one Autobot to the next now with that one single blazing red optic. "It's only logical you would demand something in return for my freedom."

"I do in indeed demand something in return," Ratchet replied. He spoke firmly, but he tone was far from being unkind. The reason he had so eagerly come to meet the 'con was staring him in the face, and he knew it would do no good to waste a second on growing uncharacteristic self doubt. "The Cybermatter equation. I want copies or your part of the project."

"Cybermatter is part of my life's work!" Shockwave growled in sudden rage. He took another heavy step toward the smaller old bot

Ratchet watched wheeljack in the corner of his vision, ad saw him clearly about to draw a blaster. Discreetly he signaled silently behind his back for him to stop it and to hold his fire.

"It's part of my life's work too," he explained firmly, his tone calm in the face of his counterpart's anger. "We may have worked separately for ages for the same goal. But it was still the end goal of us both. And only when we found ourselves working together for that brief time, did we both have the opportunity to see a real result we could see and feel and physically work with."

"And now you wish to take that from me. You wish to steal my part of the work we did."

"I most certainly don't. I only ask for a copy of your half of the equation. You keep the original data pads and files. I will finish the project, create more of the stuff, and your name be known right along side mine as the co-creators of artificially created cybermatter."

"It surprises me to see just how much you want it in the first place," Shockwave observed, his tone calmer and quieter. "The means to cyberform a world..." He backed himself up again out of the medic's personal space, and appeared to consider for a long moment. "An Autobot should logically want to destroy the source of such power, not wish to produce more..."

"Cybermatter is more than a weapon by which to gain control of solar systems. True, that's what the 'cons meant to do with it, but it's potentially so much more. The building blocks for all of cybertron, and that includes all of bot life on it. Shockwave, have you never considered before just how much a substance like this could someday do for the dying, the irreparably damaged?"

The wind gusted again, far stronger this time, and sent all three of the Autobots wobbling forward horribly, as all three struggled a moment to maintain their balance.

"Only you would think to consider a life saving medical implication for such a thing," Shockwave grumbled. "This is a substance that could get you control over this entire system and others, and you only think of saving lives..."

"And you could too. Shockwave, you aren't sparkless and self serving like so many may want to believe. You gave your time and energy to science once because you wanted to see how far you could go to change the world. The war is over and you could be more than just some war criminal doomed to run from justice until you can't run anymore, which is all you'll ever be if you refuse us now."

The huge imposing 'con was silant for a moment, and obviously considering again. When the wind picked up far stronger still, blowing particles of rust and metal dust toward them all, he turned back toward the still open doorway to his chosen hideout.

"Come inside," he said. "All of you. I have good energon fresh and ready, and we can further talk away from this wind."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Knockout sat at his post, in front of the comm computer. The ground bridge control was within easy reach with the well used measuring stick he'd learned to store stuffed down into a gap between his seat and his left armrest, where he could get to it quickly by reaching over his body with his good arm and hand, and grabbing it. The team had left some time ago. And with nothing to do for the past while, he finally stopped looking at a still and unblinking screen, and moved to turn the cart around.

Speedbreaker had stayed in the common room with the small group left at the base, after Bumblebee had left her to leave with the others. And she had begun to slowly pace and wander aimlessly around the large room, not long after the team had bridged out. She wandered to the small window in the corner of the room, and stood for a moment looking out, before she turned, wandered the outer edge of the room, sat down on the bench opposite the one she'd just left, and promptly jumped back up from that one too.

"Hey Speedy," Knockout called to her quietly across the large room. He rolled the cart back and forth slightly, and at very slow speed. The little orange and silver two wheeler turned to looked at him. She did keep walking aimlessly, but it was slower now. "It feels like one of my back tires may be low." Knockout reached around as well as he could with the stronger of his arms, and gestured vaguely toward one of the mobility cart's little back wheels. "Could I bother you to check it for me?"

"Low," Speedbreaker mumbled. The look she gave was so obviously doubtful. "It shouldn't be low..." But she hurried closer to him anyway and looked down at the back wheels of the cart, studying it visually for a second with a shrug and a shake of her head, before she walked purposefully toward one of the doors leaning of the room.

"I'm gonna go and raid Ratchet's workshop for some tools and a tire gauge," she said, pausing in the doorway a moment, and shaking her head again with doubt, before she turned and hurried away.

"You can't possibly have a low tire," Arcee said, after the small bot had hurried away. She stood up from her folding chair only to move it closer to him, before she obediently sat back down without needing to be told. She almost laughed a little, as she shook her head at him, in her own clear confusion. "Ratchet just checked all four of them this morning before you got in there."

"I know that." Knockout gave an awkward shrugging motion, with he raised his right hand for emphasis. "But Speedbreaker doesn't."

"You saw Ratchet throw the tire gauge into his compartment when he was finished with it. He's probably still got it. And you've sent Speedy on a wild goose chase!" Arcee raised a hand to her spark chamber in surprise, at a sudden burst of energy radiating away from the chamber. As quickly as it had come though, it disappeared again, and she slowly lowered her hand again.

"I'm sorry?" Knockout looked at her with a look of such bafflement on his face-plate, it was a little too obvious that she was trying not to burst out laughing at him. "Speedy's chasing what?"

"It's just an expression. Something people liked to say on Earth. It just means she's basically looking for something she may never find, without knowing she won't find it."

"Hmm. Well surely looking for something she won't find, should keep her busy for a good while. Certainly better than letting her wander around with nothing to do but worry about the bot she loves, and dreaming up every possible bad and terrible thing that her processor will only insist must have happened, when she doesn't hear anything for a little too long."

"I see what you did there," Arcee said, smiling a little with a look of understanding. Her smile turned quickly to a look of surprise, at feeling another quick energy burst, this one spreading just slightly further out across the back of her front panel.

"She's active today," she said, smiling again at her mate, who grinned back. She laughed little. "Far more than usual."

The little one was clearly at least somewhat self aware by then, and had been for a while. And her speed and energy levels decreased a bit as she fell into recharge cycles, and increased noticeably when she woke up again, in increasingly predictable patterns throughout the days and nights. Arcee kept him constantly updated on anything she felt the newspark do, and he would not have wanted it any other way.

Smokescreen had flopped down hard onto the bench against he far wall of the room, not too long after the departing group had left. And he'd been sitting in the same place, with a scowl of irritation across his face-plate ever since. He held a data pad in one of his hands, apparently going over reports involving refugee matters that had required Autobot policing in the past several days. And the pen he held in the other hand, scrawled across the pad too hard, nearly damaging the pad as he took notes, while he muttered to himself incoherently.

"I should never have been left to stay behind here," he said, finally explaining the reason for his behavior before anyone asked him to outright. He glanced up from his work, still scowling with the belligerence of a hot headed young bot. He began to make a motion of slamming his hand together again, but clearly he remembered the data pad and pen he still held in time, because he stopped and just stared at the objects a second in clear frustration as he mumbled, "I should be out kicking 'con tail pipe. I'm useful out there, and I'm no use here."

"You never know when one of us might be needed in here," Bulkhead told him with a shrug of his big shoulders. The big green bot took a seat on another bench and promptly put his huge feet up on a low work table that happened to be close enough.

"Right," Smokescreen said back, in a strangely strong tone of sarcasm. "I'm sure that protecting a carrying bot, a recent defector who will probably never need my help or anyone else's, a disabled teammate, and 'Bee's girlfriend is the best use of my talent in the warrior class."

"Smokescreen!" Bulk' exclaimed, in more than obvious disbelief over his sudden attitude.

"No offense to any of you of course," the younger bot said, catching himself quickly and gesturing around the room still holding the pen, and with a genuine look of apology on his face-plate. He shook his head silently for a second and set the data pad down on the bench beside him. "I was hanging out with Sideswipe last night. Helped him haul home a couple pieces of furniture and stuff for his housing assignment. It was cool to see on old friend of mine back on Cybertron again." He shook his head again, and smiled almost a little sheepishly. "I guess I never realized before just how bad of an influence that guy can be some times."

"Ha. You look up 'bad influence' in the achieves Smokey, and you'll find Sideswipe's picture," Bulkhead answered, with a shake of his head.

Knockout remembered his own recent brief encounter with this bot now in question – the young bot, who had made harsh judgments and accusations against him without even speaking a word to him first. He knew all to well just how not so long ago, he may well have let the young soldier have a good piece of his mind right back. But instead he'd opted to keep his mouth shut, where once he knew well his own pride would never have let him even think of remaining silent, and letting his behavior speak for itself. Now though he found himself nodding in quick agreement with Bulkhead's comment, before he finally rolled his optics slightly in disbelief over his own initial encounter with the hotheaded young bot.

His attention was pulled away from all thoughts of teammates and bad attitudes at once, when he saw Arcee shift positions in her chair close to him. She leaned forward a little and frowned in clear and sudden discomfort, while raising a hand toward her spark chamber. Before he could question her, and be sure she was alright, she moved again, shifting slowly in her chair so that she leaned awkwardly to the side with her head pressed against his left arm, still positioned so that he could easily use his hand control for the cart.

"Arcee?" he questioned, with a great conscious effort to keep his tone of voice calm and even. Her silent actions concerned him though and he knew it would have been impossible to hide the fact completely. He glanced quickly toward the other bots in the room, only to find both Bulkhead and Smokescreen staring with alarm showing on both of their face-plates. Soundwave had hovered in the furthest doorway of the common room, since the departing team had left. And he stayed there now, as awkward and clearly confused over what to do with himself as ever. But his head was turned toward them now, and it was obvious he must have been staring at them too.

"I… I think I'm okay," Arcee said after what seemed like ages, but was in reality only a brief moment. She sat herself back up straight again, and she smiled a little in assurance. But still behind that little smile was a worrying look of her clear discomfort, that he did not like in the least.

"She… she's just never moved like this before," she went on, with one hand indicating the newspark inside her chamber, when he continued to look at her in doubt. "The movement was faster then ever, before it slowed right down. The feeling in my spark chamber… squeezing…. Pulling..."

"Someone run to the medbay and find a handheld scanner for me." Knockout said, directing his hurried instruction to whoever might run to comply first.

"She's moving faster again," Arcee told him. The discomfort that had showed so clearly on her face-plate was quickly fading away. But still she looked anxious because of the behavior of the newspark. And after another second or two she leaned against her mate again, so clearly seeking protection from her concern.

"Do you think she's alright?" she questioned, mumbling against his plating. "Please tell me she's okay."

Bulkhead's large green hand, holding a med scanner at the side of his field of vision, pulled Knockout's attention slightly away from his mate before he could decide on what he wanted to say in answer to her. And instead of saying anything at all, he instead reached quickly for the scanner with his right hand, and let her go on leaning against him, while he leaned it against his arm rest with awkward efficiency, and hurriedly worked to input commands with the fingertips of his good hand, before picking the scanner back up again.

"She's okay," he said after she'd sat back up again and he'd managed to scan her. He kept his tone steady somehow, even through his own increasing mixed set of emotions, and passed the scanner back to somebot who quickly retrieved it. Finally his uncertainty gave way to a bright grin. "Both of you are fine. It just seems she's tired of spinning around in there and she's ready to be born and come see the world."


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes/ Long chapter… Oh well, probably better than too short. Again thanks for following me and the story this far.**

"Knockout," Arcee mumbled with her face against her mate's shoulder panel again. Her voice aside from being slightly muffled by his armor, was unmistakably anxious. "We can not possibly be having this child today. She's early."

"We're talking a few days ahead of schedule," Knockout answered quickly. "Not nearly early enough to make a difference." He forced his voice to remain calm and collected and wondered all the while, how it was he was actually succeeding in doing so. "Soon we'll finally get to meet her. And she'll be perfect!"

Bulkhead chose that moment to leap quickly up from the bench he was sitting on against the far wall. And clumsily he tripped over his left foot with his right, jump barely managing to catch himself, as he hopped several times across the common room floor fighting with his own footing.

"Do the two of you need anything?" He asked quickly. The look of wide optic'd near terror on his face-plate was undeniably comical. "How can I help?" The green bot paused a second before he threw a hand up into the air as he exclaimed," Wait, I know. Someone needs to run for boiling water. I'm on it!" He turned, clearly about to run out of the room entirely, before he paused again and half way turned back. "Err… Knockout, how many pots of it do you need me to boil?"

At that, Knockout only narrowed his red optics in confusion, and for a second stared at his teammate without a word.

"Bulk', what the frag would I possibly need boiling water for?" he asked after a moment, and almost shaking his head.

"I… I have no idea whatsoever," the big green bot admitted slowly. His tone was almost sheepish and he gave a little shrug of his shoulders. "It always seems to work that way on Earth. Haven't you ever seen any classic television!"

Knockout only shook his head at that, and chuckled under his intakes with a roll of his optics.

"I'm hitting the wash station," Arcee said. Her decision made, she stood up from her chair, and turned to walk away in the direction of the living space she shared with her bondmate.

"Is that really a good idea?" Smokescreen questioned in alarm, sitting up straighter in his place on a bench across the room. "We need to get you right to the medbay!"

"Both of you are being ridiculous." Arcee shook her head before she gave a chuckle of laughter at her clueless teammates. "The youngling is not going to born this minute. It'll be hours. Maybe even tomorrow." She cast a firm look at first one of the panicked bots, and then the other. "I don't need to go the medbay and be bored for hours. What I need is to grab a quick shower, while I'm still perfectly able to do so."

"Knockout, I'm sorry," Speedbreaker said from behind the rest of the group. She came back into the common room through a far less used door, out of a corridor that led eventually to Ratchet's workshop in an out of the way part of the base. "I looked everywhere I could get to without making a complete mess of the workshop. I can't find a tire gauge anywhere. I have no idea where I might find an air compressor either."

"Don't worry about it, Speedy," Knockout said hurriedly. "The tire's fine for now. And Arcee has gone onto stage one spark separation."

"What?" The little orange and silver bot exclaimed. "No way!"

"Yes way," Arcee said quietly with a nod of her head. Her tone of voice still barely hid her lingering anxiety, but she smiled a little as well.

"You okay?" Speedbreaker asked her. And Arcee nodded again, smiling brighter now.

Knockout was both relieved and grateful, when Smokescreen stepped close to him and motioned his clear intentions of taking over his post at the monitoring station. With a quick nod of his head, he turned then to look back at his mate.

"I'll give you a lift," he said with a smile and a little laugh. He motioned with his right hand for her to climb up onto his lap, and when she did so, though with a bit of obvious hesitation, he rolled on heading back toward their living space.

Their wash station, tucked away behind a door in the far corner of their reasonably sized living space, was, like all others on the base, a bit of a cramped affair. And Knockout's very much necessary accessibility set up made it slightly more cramped and crowded than any other may have been. But Knockout had gotten very good with negotiating the tight space on the cart. And though he did not typically drive the cart very far into there – it was a very tight fit, and would require him backing out again because there was no way to turn around again, making it more practical to be lifted off the cart by somebot and left sitting on a shower bench – he could certainly do it perfectly well if he needed to. And sure enough he insisted on driving the cart right up to the edge of the little shower enclosure with Arcee still balanced and now laughing, on his knees.

When she got off again and stood to set the spray of the water, he motioned with his optics for her to sit down on the shower bench herself. With a chuckle of laughter and a slight shake of her head, she did so, instead of simply lifting the lightweight bench out to shove against the opposite wall as usual.

"Do you want me to leave you alone in here for a while?" Knockout asked. He hoped she'd say she didn't want him to, and when she shook her head, he inwardly felt glad of it.

"I was hoping to have a little time with you away from those two lunkheads we call our teammates," Arcee said, with a look that said it all.

She laughed a little under her intakes and rolled her optics a little to show her disbelief over the ridiculous overreactions of Bulkhead and Smokescreen. But another burst of energy flowed away from her spark, across her spark chamber and through the front of her frame a second later. And she learned forward a little on the shower bench, her face-plate frozen for a brief moment in a look of startled discomfort.

"You okay?" Knockout questioned.

"I'm fine," Arcee insisted. She reached for a bottle of cleaning solvent that sat hanging, in a little decorative basket from a bracket on the wall, and sat holding the bottle, silent and thinking while warm oily water poured over her, and drained away through a hole in the floor of the well designed shower set up.

It was a bit of an awkward reach, over the left side of his frame with his right arm and using his ever present measuring stick, but Knockout managed to reach toward the shelf he was parked badly up against, so that he could grab a wash cloth from the top of a little folded stack of them. And when he turned again, steadying his balance once on the cart with his bent right knee and still almost too weak left arm leaning on the arm rest, so that he could hand her the rag, the unintentional irony of it was not lost on her at all, after many months of diligently bringing washing rags to him morning after morning. The distracted and distant look left her at once and she smiled at him then.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked her, smiling back.

"We're really going to be parents," she answered slowly.

"Yeah."

"Think you're ready for it all?"

"Yes. Well mostly yes… almost. No. You?"

"Yes… no..."

"What are we going to call her?" Knockout asked, after both had been silent for a moment or two.

The two of them had considered names together a bit in recent days. And the team provided no shortage of mostly unasked-for advice on the matter as well. But still, they had never exactly settled on anything entirely.

"I still have no real idea," Arcee admitted.

And Knockout only shrugged slightly, still calm as ever, in reply. "I'm sure we'll know exactly what her name should be when we finally meet her." He paused a second, chuckled and as an after thought added, "let's… just make sure Bulkhead and Miko have no real input..."

"Ha," Arcee answered, laughing now. She set down the wash rag down on the edge of the shower enclosure, and just sat again with the water falling over her. "I don't care how much either one of them insists they predict a new youngling naming trend, with us as trend setters. 'Danger-bot Destruction', is not a cute or even appropriate name."

"I can't say I much care for the notion of 'Metallic Powerhouse,' either." Knockout shook his head with a slight roll of his optics.

Still chuckling a little, Arcee reached behind her to turn off the spray of oily water. And then she stood up, far more careful than usual not to slip on the wet tiles of the floor. A sudden energy pulse through her spark chamber and spreading fast through the front of her frame, made her pause in the middle of climbing over the low edge of the shower, and with her optics suddenly wide with surprise, and pained discomfort, she finished climbing over moving very slowly, and leaned forward for a second against the opposite wall.

Knockout managed with the usual degree of moderate difficultly, to back himself on the cart part way out of the wash station. And only when she had stood back up again and tuned to follow him slowly, did he back up the rest of the way into their living space. Arcee crossed the room, and stopping to right a data pad that had fallen over at some point on a shelf, she went to stand next to the little recharging basket that sat set up near the recharge station, closest to her side because they had both decided together that by far made the most sense.

"Tomorrow night we're going to have a little one recharging with us," she said, as she gestured with her optics to the little recharging basket. She chuckled a little then and added, "or, keeping us both out of recharge..."

"Our child, cry all night and keep us up? Never! She will be perfect. She is _ours_ after all." Knockout gave a look of mock upset over the thought of their youngling being anything less. And immediately Arcee laughed loudly, while she shook her head.

"How's your foot?" Arcee asked suddenly. Her question was so out of nowhere and seemingly had nothing to do with anything, that he just looked at her blankly for a second. Her optics though, he saw in the next instant, were staring right down toward his left lower leg and foot, which, as typical rested at an odd angle on the mobility cart's foot rest,. He'd been struggling slightly, for the past minutes they'd been talking, to move it the tiny bit it could move, in order to relieve growing tension on the wiring again.

"It's fine," he said calmly. Indeed it wasn't exactly not fine.

But Arcee slowly and carefully lowered herself a seated position on the floor of their living space, from which she could lift her mate's dysfunctional limb, support the leg lightly on her lap and slowly bend the ankle joint. It had always been easier for her to do it while he was laying down on the recharge station, but with enough time they had both learned to improvise, and doing it the way she was now, had worked well more than once.

"Arcee, you shouldn't be..."

"I'm not completely helpless and dying, you know," Arcee mumbled, chuckling with a shake of her head. But not a second later, she let go of her mate's lower leg, and moved to lean forward a little, with both of her hands bracing her weight on the floor of their living space.

"Just… gimme a second..." she explained, speaking quietly and holding her position a second more before she slowly moved back to sit straighter again.

"You alright?" Knockout questioned, well aware that he was uselessly fretting.

And Arcee only nodded then smiled a little. "I'm good. Though… strangely I feel like being down low to the floor might just be helpful." She smiled again, but she was quiet. And slowly the smile left her face-plate, to be replaced by a look of anxious worry and nerves. She dropped her optics, and stared at the smooth tiles she was sitting on. A long moment passed, dragging on, without her looking up again, or saying a thing.

"Arcee," Knockout said. He reached out with his stronger and functional hand, and though it was almost too long of a reach, he just managed to gently grab one of hers. And when he did so, she finally looked at his optics again. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I'm fine." Arcee smiled along with her simple fast reply. But Knockout knew her more than well enough to not buy it for a second.

"Please, talk to me," he said, still smiling his assurance as he looked her in the optics.

"It's gonna be a long night," she mumbled slowly. "I know that much. But I don't know what to expect exactly. You know I never liked complete unknowns."

Knockout nodded in understanding, and wished in that moment more than ever, that he could lift her from the floor, place her gently onto the recharge station then lay down on there beside her and hold her close to his frame while he talked with her. But he couldn't do that. Not without help, and there was no one close by who could help him. So he settled instead for just sitting where he was and letting her sit looking up at him with her nervous blue optics.

"How do you feel right now?" he asked her, patiently.

"It's… not too bad. The last energy pulse was a bit worse then the one before that, and there's always a steady little dull aching pain besides. I'm sure it's going to get worse though."

"Judging by time between energy pulses, progress might just be going pretty fast."

"Is that good?" Arcee's optics continued to look at her mate's.

"Well, its not entirely bad," Knockout said still smiling.

"Okay," Arcee mumbled slowly. Her tone said that she trusted him and his answer. Another second though and she said hesitantly, "please don't tell me you want me to go right to the medbay."

"No," Knockout shook his head, and smiled his assurance at her. "It's too early. Nothing to do and we'd both only be bored and nervous in there. We'll go back to the team in the common room, until we really need to move to medical."

"Thank you," Arcee said. But then she fell silent again.

It was at that moment, while watching her as she watched him with those same nervous optics, that Knockout finally thought he understood her true concern. It was an instinctive thing really. A hint of an idea he picked up on when he tried hard enough, through the connection he shared with her.

"You couldn't get rid of me if you wanted to," he said.

Arcee nodded, smiling her thanks, as she slowly stood up from the floor. She waked toward the door, with her mate right behind her, but stopped again near the door, turning slowly so that she could pause in her tracks, with a hand on his shoulder panel and the one one on the cart's armrest.

"I'll comm Ratchet," Knockout decided with confidence after his mate had stood back up straight again, and looked him in the optics to tell him she was still okay. He rolled his cart at slow speed back down the corridor. Arcee walked slowly beside him. As much as he wanted to carry her again sitting on his lap while he drove, he sensed how she preferred to walk instead, how much walking a bit felt far better to her at the moment. "I don't doubt for a second he'll scrap the mission and bridge straight back when I tell him what's happened."

But Arcee only held up a hand quickly and with it she determinedly waved off his suggestion. "No. No. We can't drop this mission now. Any steps toward peaceful agreements with the 'cons are needed ones. And if Ratchet can persuade Shockwave to defect today, save us possible energon-shed, in conflict with him later..."

"Arcee..."

"You called us the winning team when you yourself first defected," Arcee said. Her steps were still slow, but her face-plate was determined and serious all the same. "You think we got to be the winners by running when we just have been minutes from having our next win in the bag? There's still time. We… we'll be okay."

"What should we tell him?" Knockout asked her, as soon as she had finished speaking. He didn't like this a single bit. But she had been an Autobot since day one of her military career. He was a still recent defector to the team she had served in the role of helping to lead into it's unlikely success. And now, despite her present 'status,' both her tone and look on her face-plate told him that she had fallen fully right back into officer mode.

"We don't tell him anything," Arcee said, still walking in slow but steady steps back toward the common room. "If and when the team updates us with a status report, no one say a word about this. If Ratchet hears about this now, his medical protocols will come first and he'll scrap the mission. You're right about that. We may never get another shot at making Shockwave an ally instead of an enemy. We can't let Ratchet get distracted now. It's too important!"

"Arcee. I can't say I like this much."

"I'm not asking you to like it. I'm asking you to go along with it anyway." Arcee paused suddenly as the pair got closer to the common room. And she turned a little to let her optics stare into his a moment as she considered. "Knockout. In your medical understanding, how long can we wait?"

"It's impossible to say. There's so much room for variation from one carrier and newspark to the next. It could be six hours, or it may be all night before anything much really happens!"

"Okay. Just… say nothing yet. Let him work."

"I'll agree to that… for now." Knockout's agreement was tentative, conditional, and he knew that she knew it too.

"Can we take the long way back around?" she suggested. "I want to walk a bit. Ratchet did say recently that if possible I should walk..."

"Carefully. But yes, of course we can," Knockout smiled back.

The pair made it back to the common room, just in time for another energy pulse to cause Arcee to stop dead in the doorway. (Two had made her stop during their long-way, walk back too.) She moved as if she were about to turn again to face toward her mate, but instead she turned to the door frame, which was closer to her, and rested against it, awkwardly, knees bending slightly under the weight of her horrible forward slumping. When she lifted her head again after a moment to look to her mate, who had paused beside her, he so clearly saw the pain flashing across her optics, though she said not a word about it.

Speedbreaker had been sitting on a bench in an out of the way corner exchanging so clearly awkward and curious looks with Soundwave, as he stood in another doorway opposite her. Immediately she leapt onto her feet, and Knockout watched her hurry toward them. Speedy stood a second nearby, until she could gently grab Arcee as the energy pulse reached its end, and died away. Walking slowly, arms around her and supporting part of her weight, she helped her the closest bench in front of the nearest wall, and motioned for her to sit herself down. Knockout shot the young bot a grateful glance, as soon as he had rolled himself over so that he could park in front on the bench facing his mate again. Speedbreaker, sitting down beside her and smiling slightly, nodded her silent understanding.

For a while the small small team of Autobots and Speedy, sat in the common room, conversing idly about nothing of any real importance at all. Bulkhead kept watch over the monitors, and listened for comm frequencies, while he listened to the pointless but still amusing stream of conversation, and joining in here and there. Arcee joined in too, sharing a quick anecdote, when the talk turned somehow to the long gone days of Autobot training camp. She laughed along with the others, when Bulkhead recounted a little tale of his own, and explained how it had of course in typical Bulkhead fashion, gone comically bad. Clearly she was glad for a little distraction from her growing state of discomfort. And the entire group was glad for a little distraction from their concern for their teammates that had not yet returned to base.

Once, in the middle of some random story Smokescreen had began to tell regarding his experience with elite guard boot camp, and some bot called Taillight, Arcee moved to sit forward on the bench, her frame tense with pain and her optics wide with the shock of it so clearly getting so quickly worse than before. Smokescreen stopped speaking at once, and for a second he and Bulkhead exchanged looks of near complete terror over the whole thing. Knockout saw but completely ignored the reaction of the two entirely, far too concerned with caring for his mate then with the ridiculousness of his teammates. Reaching forward as far as he safely could on the cart, he held a hand out to her, smiling with more confidence then he sudden felt, when she slowed moved to grab for it. And for another moment both of them just stayed that way, unmoving and with no one saying anything. After another moment she sat up straighter again, and with a look of something clearly meant to be assurance at the team, she gestured with her hand for Smokescreen to go on with the story he had been telling. Far more uncertainly now, he slowly did.

Smokescreen finished the story he'd been telling, and the conversation changed directions entirely then, moving to some talk about construction and impending completion of the latest high rise housing structure to be built. But no more then a few minutes into the new topic of idle discussion, Arcee tensed and leaned over, and this time braced her upper body on bent elbows that rested on her knees. Speedbreaker, still sitting beside her on the bench, quickly placed her arms around Arcee's frame and pulled her friend against her carefully. With the blue bot leaning still nearly ridged with pain, against her front plating, Speedbreaker met Knockout's optics with a serious look.

"You've got to comm Ratchet," she said. "I know he's got a mission to lead, but can't the team come back?"

"You're right, Speedy," Knockout answered slowly, conflicted where he felt he shouldn't have been. "I told her I wanted to comm him already. And she won't let me." He moved the cart a little, so that he could look at his mate's face, over the top of the little orange and silver's bot's shoulder panel. Calmly he asked her, "think we can comm him now?"

For a second, Arcee only shook her head, waving his begging question off with one hand helplessly without a word. But then the pain and tension let her frame again, and she slowly moved again, to turn and look around the room a little and settle back onto the bench.

"No," she said quickly, as soon as she had once again found her voice. "Don't comm and bother him yet. We need this mission. I'm okay, I'm okay."

"Arcee, the energy pulses are obviously only minutes apart already," Knockout protested. "And you're obviously already in far more pain than I've ever seen you in." He looked around at the other bots in the room, desperately begging silently and with only his optics, for someone to please offer him some back up on the matter. Bulkhead and Smokescreen were once again exchanging looks of shock and terror, and Smokescreen on top of that looked almost about to make a mad dash away from the room and the team at any second. He had half stood up from his seat, and was poised to run for it. Soundwave was standing as still and silent as he had been all the while, not helpful in the least, but at least not a hindrance or distraction either. Speedbreaker sat nodding her head slightly yet firmly, as he she sat, ready to move to help and support Arcee again at any second she was needed.

"Arcee, we need to comm Ratchet," Speedy said firmly. She took her gently by the shoulder panels and encouraged her to look her in the optics a second, which she did.

"Knockout," Arcee questioned of her mate, as she slowly turned slightly to look at him instead. "How's it looking?"

Knockout didn't even bother to turn around as he asked for somebot to bring him the med scanner again, intending this time to keep it with him. The noises he heard behind him, told him that Bulkhead had jumped up fast to get him one, after Smokescreen had indeed made a dash for it right out of the common room and away down a corridor eventually leading all the way to the lift. Bulk' was quick with his hurried errand, and Knockout grabbed the scanner awkwardly and without even turning around.

"Newspark is still almost fully attached, but the surrounding field is breaking apart," he announced with a mix of unease and excitement, as soon as he had scanned her and quickly interpreted the data he saw on the little screen. Almost carelessly he dropped the small machine onto the footrest of the cart, right behind his right foot. "This would be stage two already then."

"Ratchet will make it back in time," Arcee said. She was strangely calm then, and her expression was one of confidence. But she moved again then, this time pulling her knees up on onto the bench with her, and turning slowly toward Speedbreaker, with unmistakable dread written all over her face-plate.

From somewhere behind him, Knockout heard Bulkhead mumble something about going after Smokescreen. Then something about how a good match down in the gym might settle his young friend's nerves. There were heavy footsteps moving in another direction then and strangely Soundwave finally spoke up with an uncertain offer to man the comms. Arcee gestured her wordless assent to the offer without looking at him, at the very second Speedbreaker pulled her against her frame again, just in time for the next hard energy burst.

Knockout backed himself and the cart up a little, and carefully he locked his brake in place. Speedbreaker, thankfully understood at once what it was he wanted to do, without him even needing to explain anything. And when Arcee had once again looked up and was struggling at little to sit up, the young bot moved carefully, urging and helping her to move slowly so that she could sit on the floor in front of the bench. Just as soon as she had managed to move, wordlessly following directions without a protest, Arcee deliberately fell against Knockout's legs, in their still, sitting position on the cart, and with her head resting on his knees. In another moment she lifted her head to look up at him, smiling a little, shakily.

"It's okay. You're alright," he said gently, and with his optics never leaving her for a second. Trusting himself to know the right thing to do, he moved his right arm so that he hand could rest against the back of her shoulder panel. And he pulled her gently back into her position against his knees. Immediately through the connection their shared connection, he felt a hint of her relief at that, and again he spoke to her. "Please, tell me what you need me to do?"

"Don't leave me," she answered back unexpectedly. One of her hands grabbed urgently for his left one, which had remained helplessly resting almost useless near the hand control. And once she had it, she was so clearly in no hurry at all to let go again, as he did the best he could to squeeze back a little. "Please, don't leave me!"

"Leave? Arcee, why would I leave? I already told you, you couldn't get rid of me if you tried." Rubbing his hand gently against her back panel, Knockout was aware of just how warm her body armor was, as her frame began to heat up from inside.

"Knockout, I… I can't… I don't want to..." Arcee mumbled almost incoherent against his bent knees. She stopped her mumbling then without finishing, and barely having formed her thought at all. But behind her mumbling he felt a strange intense fear that bordered almost on panic, and that he knew at once was not his own.

"You're alright," he repeated, slow and quiet, as an energy pulse far worse than any yet spread across her spark chamber, and through her frame. Her free arm wrapped tightly around the backs of her knees, she buried her face-plate tight against his armor, while he went right on rubbing the back of her still warming blue plating. "There's nothing to be scared of. You're fine. Both you and our little one."

Knockout had decided initially that the fact that things were moving so fast in Arcee's case, was not entirely a bad thing exactly. And indeed it wasn't. But she was moving so fast through the process of spark separation, reaching within only a couple of hours, a point that on average would have been three times as long. Her poor little body had so little time to adjust to the terrible amount of physical stress it was under. And her processor had barely had time to even try to get used to a pain that only grew rapidly worse. The process in her case may have so far been quick. But it had still been a while, and that was long enough for the physical stress to began to tire her quickly. And with a good while yet to go, and the certainly of it only getting still far worse, she was fast becoming overwhelmed. And Knockout sensed so clearly that that was responsible for the greatest part of her now ever present near panic.

"Speedbreaker, I need you to comm Ratchet. Give him a brief status report, and let him know we need him back here as soon as he can get back," Knockout said. Someone had to make the judgment call that Arcee was no longer quite in a clear mind to make, and as much as the very unerstanding of it made him suddenly uncomfortable, the neutral status of both Speedy and Soundwave, made him the only bot let on base officially cleared to make such judgment calls. There were still Bulkhead and Smokescreen of course. But they had both made their discomfort with the situation, and their urgent need to run away from it, quite abundantly clear.

Speedbreaker, was still sitting on the same nearby bench, calm and paying attention, ready to help with anything whenever she was asked. And in the corner of his vision, while he continued to sit unmoving, holding and supporting his bondmate the best way he could, he saw her jump up quickly from her seat nodding silently with relief clear on her face-plate.

"Their mission…. Meeting…. Too important to bother him just yet..." Arcee mumbled a mostly coherent sentence into his armor. "We still have time..." She raised her head from its place on his knees, where she was apparently oddly comfortable. Her optics burned into his with her determination to win in a situation she could only see as just another battle in a life she'd devoted to long to endless battles. But looking past her sheer stubborn determination he saw the little coolant tears of pain forming in the corners of each optic.

"Arcee. We need to get him back here, now." Knockout's tone was firm, though not without love and kindness either.

"Okay," Arcee answered, giving in with a sigh that signified her hidden relief at the matter taken from her hands. She put her head right back down onto his knees not a second after that.

Her level of pain had so clearly been high for a while already. The stronger and stronger energy pulses that continued to tear across her frame, were clearly closer and closer together now, and from her perspective would have felt almost constant already with few brief brakes between. And even between hard pulses was the constant growing ache of discomfort that had never stopped for hours. Yet through all of that she had so far never really made a sound at all, aside from the times she still spoke with considerable coherence. Her head remained, for the most part, tight against her mate's body armor, while she remained slumping in a partly kneeling but now mostly sitting position on the floor. One of her hands had not let his go since she'd first grabbed hold of it, and her free arm stayed tightly wrapped around the backs of his knees. But still, she was quiet.

Knockout was therefore taken aback when, with her head on his knees and her face-plate tight against his body armor plating, she suddenly screamed loudly. His spark dropped at once, and his calm demeanor, more and more of which he'd been faking for her sake, threatened to shatter in seconds. With a fair percentage of her body pressed against his, he could feel her plating heating up further.

"Intake," he said slowly and quietly, reminding her as her intakes hitched and struggled through her vents badly enough for him to notice it himself. "Nice slow intakes. And once more. Good job. Just keep intaking."

"Knockout," Speedbreaker's small and suddenly uncertain voice, startled him away from his intent focus on his mate. And slowly, without disturbing her, he moved slightly, turning his head just enough that he could look at the young bot, standing at his right shoulder. The look of dread he saw on Speedy's face-plate made his spark drop, before she even finished speaking. "I can't reach Ratchet on the comm. I can't reach Bumblebee or Wheeljack either. I just get static."

"Oh scrap." Knockout thought he should have known what to say, far less ridiculous than that useless response. But he didn't.

"Unreachable?" Arcee mumbled into her mate's plating. This time she didn't even bother to lift her head again. "Static? The… the comms may be down…."

Soundwave, still seated at the monitoring station, where he'd been silent and nearly forgotten for a good while already, began suddenly to type furiously on the keyboard in front of him. His long and delicate fingers tapped against the keys with precision, while he appeared to stare straight ahead of him looking though his face-shield as endless lines of text and code scrolled fast across the monitoring screen. With more fast taps against keys, maps appeared in front of him, turning over and folding in on themselves as the next one replaced it on the screen. Then there was more fast scrolling text, and other map and lines upon lines of code, flashing in blue over the screen. And Knockout still giving his mate the greatest part of his attention, watched his former crew mate work from the corner of his field of vision, and reasoned without needing to ask or be told, that Soundwave was working for their benefit and not against them.

"Steady intakes, steady intakes," he patiently reminded his mate, turning his full attention back to her, as she began to tremble against his knees from the relentless shock and stress on her body, and she seemed to forget all about intaking again.

When the next energy pulse torn through her frame only seconds later, she opted this time to loudly shout cybertronian curses that might just have made even a wrecker blush, instead of screaming again. Knockout moved his hand slowly away from its position on her back panel, and reached slowly down toward the med scanner that sat at his feet and that he not possibly manage to retrieve himself. Speedbreaker, grabbed it quickly and handed it to him. Then she kneeled on the floor beside Arcee.

"Come over to me for a second, so that Knockout can scan you," she told her calmly. Arcee only nodded once, lifting her head a little before she managed with a bit of help to move herself over to lean against the other bot.

After a quick scan and then a second one just to be sure, Knockout sat on the cart staring at the scanner's little read out screen with a falling spark and a wildly dropping tank. Arcee, her face-plate turned away from him and sadly caught up fully in her own discomfort thankfully did not see as he shook his head, while his calm facade nearly left him entirely. But speedbreaker did see it. And she looked up at him with unspoken questions in her optics.

"Protective energy field is all but gone now," he explained, shaky and hoping it would never show. "But still, no sign of spark separation."

If Arcee had even registered him talking at all in his hushed tones, she gave no indication. Instead she only buried her face-plate against Speedy's bright orange armor. The look on her face-plate, only partly visible past her friend's armor, and the general tension of her body itself, reviled just how stubbornly she refused to scream anymore. But she did mumbled another good string of a few choice words against Speedy's paneling. Speedbreaker, clearly more startled then offended, cringed lightly for a second, but she regained her wits quickly, and gently helped Arcee back over to sit against her mate again, as soon she she weakly reached for him urgently.

"Comm status – fully operational," Soundwave said from his post across the room. His voice was as usual quiet and nearly without any emotional it all. It sounded almost wrong in the midst of the current situation. "Comm links – active. Location of team – inside the center of the mountain."

"That could well explain why the comms aren't working," Speedbreaker said, trying hard to be helpful, though she clearly knew she was stating the obvious.

"Too much interference from the mountain itself," Knockout nodded, agreeing.

Time dragged on for what seemed like ages, while Soundwave worked hard, pulling all the stops he knew, to boost the comm signal. And dreadfully soon Arcee, quickly becoming exhausted by the merciless physical stress and horrible pain, sat almost entirely unmoving, head on her mate's knees, one harm tightly wrapped around the backs of his folded knees and the other hand refusing again to let go of his. Weak and helpless, she only sobbed with pain silently against his red paneling, while her body first began to tremble, and then to shake with the stress of it all.

"Remember that night up on 'our' cliff?" Knockout said, speaking to her calmly and deliberately. "You told me what we'd gone and done, and I looked at you like you had lost your mind. But you were so happy. We both were." He went on speaking, trying to make her listen to him, to hold her focus more on his words and less on her own still increasing pain. He tried hard and desperately to make her smile even slightly, to make her try to laugh so that perhaps she would steady her intakes again. "None of this will be for nothing. She will finally be here soon enough. You'll finally know what color she will be. What her optics will look like. That tiny frame will be a real person, with her own hopes and dreams..."

"Knockout..." Arcee mumbled, barely audible into his armor, and again not bothering to lift her head and look at him. "Please… shut up!"

He might have been startled, and he was certainly a little shocked. But nevertheless, he shut his mouth at once. He and Speedbreaker exchanged look after worried, panicked and dread filled look, as Arcee's state appeared to quickly grow even worse, and with Speedy entirely unsure what anyone could do, and Knockout's state of severe physical disability preventing him from doing any of the things he knew to do as a medic.

He considered instructing her to comm Bulkhead and Smokescreen. To the pit with their ridiculous unease and discomfort over the situation. Arcee needed them and they were going to help. He made up is mind at once that he would indeed instruct her to comm both of them. But before he could open his mouth and find his voice to speak. The comm link mounted on the monitoring station across the room gave out a familiar beep, which made him dare to feel relief.

"Knockout!" Ratchet's voice called, cheerfully over the comm. "Send us a bridge. We're coming home!"

"Groundbridge – activating."

"Soundwave?" Ratchet questioned over the commlink. His concern at hearing a very different bot than he's assumed he would hear, was all too clear.

"Ratchet – required at once to attend to medical emergency."

* * *

"Medical emergency?" Ratchet questioned quickly as soon as he had run through the groundbridge, the second it was activated in a corner of the common room.

He took less than a second to look around, making assessments and piecing together what it was he was looking at, before he knew exactly what had happened. He was on the floor at once right beside Arcee, and grabbing the scanner from it's place dropped half carelessly next to Knockout's foot pedal, he struggled to scan her while she sat still silently crying into her mate's armor.

"You should have comm'd to call me back as soon as she went into second stage spark separation," the old medic scolded anyone that might have heard him say it. He shook his head slightly, with his focus mostly on juggling holding the scanner and trying to gently coax Arcee to sit up a bit. "I would have come right back, and to the pit with the mission!"

"Come on," he said to Arcee, speaking kindly where in countless other situations he might only have been frustrated instead. "You need to move a bit, so I can scan you."

"This is not good," Knockout said, speaking again in hushed tones. "This happened too fast. She's not doing well. Pain levels far higher than we might have expected. No more remaining protective energy field at all, but the newspark has barely even tried to separate itself from from hers yet."

"Ratchet, what…. do we do?" Bumblebee questioned, uncertain and standing close by.

"Let's try turning her around," Ratchet decided firmly. "Always try the simplest things first. And a change of position, a change her from staying bent so far forward like that, may just be enouhg to trigger the newspark to began to quickly detach itself." The old medic's first instinct was to simply do his job, quickly and without a word to any aside from his patient. But years of teaching long before the war, had equipped him with a strong enough teaching protocol, that it kicked in at once. And he began to simply educate the young bot as he worked just as quickly.

Arcee, giving in to Ratchet's gentle and persistent coaxing, finally lifted her head off her mate's knees. And for a second, she started up at Knockout with big and wide open coolant filled optics.

"I'm sorry for being so mean to you," she said, with her voice almost steady again.

"You weren't being mean to me," Knockout answered back. He smiled a little, as he moved, shifting positions as well as he could, so that he could gently help to urge her to move. "You think, in years as a 'con, serving on the warship, I've never been told to shut up before?"

Ratchet chuckled a knowing little laugh at the pair's little exchange, as he helped Arcee into a new position, facing forward now with her back against Knockout's right knee and the frame of the cart. Carefully he moved her arms so that both hands hung reaching toward the floor beneath her and let her lean her head back a bit. She glared her displeasure at him, so obviously not liking this new position at all. But still she went along with it and for that he was relieved.

"I feel like I'm going to purge my tank," Arcee groaned, but at least the tears had stopped.

"Do you think you will?" Ratchet questioned her seriously. And Arcee only shook her head the little bit she could still bring herself to move.

"No. I just feel like I'm going to." The coolant tears had stopped, but still she looked beyond miserable.

"How'd it go out there?" she still somehow managed to ask after a moment in which she nearly screamed again. Her optics stared up at the medic expectantly, as she mumbled, "did Shockwave see reason?"

"Shockwave has defected," Ratchet answered simply. He gave her a smile along with his fast and simple answer.

And when he scanned her again, after he'd waited a short while, Knockout, 'Bee, and Speedy all looked at him with silent expectation. The old medic only shook his head, still looking intently at the scanner in his hand, when he had not seen any new sign of detachment. Arcee, catching the looks exchanged by the others, clearly looked disheartened and then slowly crushed and anxious. But they waited, no one saying anything at all. Another slow wave of the med scanner over her small body and Ratchet looked at the group again, this time with unquestionable seriousness on his face-plate, before he began to stand up from his place kneeling on the floor.

"I think it's about time we move to the medbay now," he declared, his tone calm but urgent nevertheless. He put his arms under her frame in one fast and well practiced move, and scooped Arcee right up into his arms as he stood.

Endless centuries of practice at such things, allowed the old bot to speak in a calm, even tone, and one that was even leaning slightly toward cheerful. But there was no disguising anything completely where his team was concerned. The small close group knew each other far too well for that. And Knockout was a medic himself and had proven more than once incapable of missing a beat. In fact, he stared at the old bot with a look of concern, begging for answers. And that look from her mate, made Arcee began to question too, with her own silent frightened optics.

"Wheeljack," Ratchet, casting a stern look at the white wrecker who had paused uncertainly at the edge of the common room and just looked like a bot in need to direction amid the sudden slight chaos. "Go to my workshop and retrieve the youngling frame. Give it a quick coat of protectant oil, and bring it to the medbay. When you get it back here, lay it down on the repair table I'll have ready closest to the recharge station I'm putting Arcee on."

The wrecker stood where he was for a brief moment longer, looking dazed. Finally he snapped out f it, shook his head slightly as if to shake off his shock over bridging into unexpected pandemonium, and turned away to run for the workshop across the base.

"Is there anything I can do?" Speedbreaker asked, quite unexpectedly as she bent down to help Knockout unlock his brake with his suddenly fumbling nervous right hand, and Ratchet inwardly shock his head in disbelief at having forgotten all about her entirely.

"Possibly," he answered quickly. "Come along then, assuming of course that Arcee and Knockout don't mind. No doubt you'll be useful at some point."

"Ratchet, what's happening?" Arcee questioned, as soon as she was placed gently as possible on a recharge station inside the medbay. She spoke weakly, barely finding her voice again, right before so obviously nearly screaming out loud with pain. Her blue optics were dull with her tiredness and she continued to constantly shake and tremble with shock and physical stress on her frame.

"The newspark has gone into slight distress," the old bot admitted. He kept his tone cheerful, encouraging calmness from her. He held up a hand a little, indicating through the gesture that he had more to say, and quickly he indeed went on speaking. "Her spark pulse has slowed down more than I'd like. But it was still reading as steady when I scanned you, which is what we want."

"Slow but steady is generally much better than fast but erratic," Knockout said to his mate, understanding Ratchet's explanation and its implications at once. He rolled the cart close to the recharge station, the second Ratchet stepped aside slightly in order to let him.

"There's been so little progress with spark separation from the start," Ratchet said. He spoke kindly be serious all the same. "If nothing much has happened this far into stage four, I'm not hopeful it will, at least not in reasonable time. And now with the newspark distressed we are out of time."

When Arcee made not even an attempt to speak, but instead only looked over at him with her wide frightened optics clouded with pain, groaned with terrible discomfort and tried to turn herself to the side a little, futilely seeking an even slightly more comfortable position, Knockout reached for her hand and squeezed it a little, urging her wordlessly to stay put. Ratchet quickly attached her to monitors and an energon line. But she barely appeared to notice, and only stared at her mate, begging him with her optics for answers, while he only appeared hesitant to say a thing.

Ratchet talked quickly, remaining in his calm professional role of medic, finding the balance without much thought, between appeared too detached entirely and appeared far too invested in the situation, though he indeed was. He explained quickly how the mild dose of medication he was currently giving his patent through the energon line would certainly cause her to feel detached and strange, but assured her that she should be fine anyway and otherwise coherent. He explained just as quickly how he would then fast as possible access her manual override, so that he could open her spark chamber quickly, and with use of the small collection of tools, inside the drawer in gestured toward, so that 'Bee could retrieve the needed items for him from a lower cabinet, he could carefully cut the connection between the sparks of carrier and youngling. He would not have expected that Arcee would almost immediately and quite unexpectedly burst into a good fit of coolant tears, which quickly filled and further clouded her already blurred optics.

"Hey, it's fine" Knockout said slowly, still calm and smiling. His functional hand let go of his mate's so that he could reach in a half pointless attempt to wipe the tears from one side of her face-plate, with a finger tip. "You remember we discussed possible routine interventions a while back? How Ratchet and I both assured you that such eventualities aren't any cause for any great concern."

Ratchet was busy both with preparing for a simple but still urgent and important job, and with still taking the opportunity to educate his young student. But still for a second his optics met Knockout's, and he saw the exhaustion, concern, and determination on the red painted defector's face-plate. Knockout was in a far better state than the old medic had secretly worried he may be long before then. The red painted defector, had been cried on, told off, and probably screamed at repeated for hours by a mate not in her right mind, and he had simply accepted it all. He would never hurt Arcee. There was no worry over that, and the very idea had not even entered Ratchet's mind. It was doubtful to him that he would even snap at her once. But the bot had not even begged for a moment away to think, and many bots did that. Ratchet met his optics once again fast, with a single nod of approval, just to let him know he was impressed and thankful.

"It isn't that..." Arcee said, still oddly upset. Her pain levels were greatly decreased as the medication took effect, and that was entirely obvious to anyone just from simply observing her. But still coolant continued to stream down her face-plate. "I… I feel like I've failed her..."

"Oh no, no," Knockout told her at once, and without needing a second to think over a reply. When her hand grabbed for him, uncoordinated from the effects of the medication, and missing to nearly smack him on the chest panel instead, he grabbed it and smiled with assurance again. "You haven't failed anyone, least of all our little one. She's ready to come and see the world, to meet you, meet both of us…. But some newsparks just need a bit more help than others..."

Wheeljack hurried into the medbay to set the youngling frame carefully onto a repair table, just as he'd been asked to, before he quickly ducked back out again, his arrival and departure barely noticed. But Arcee turned her head a little to look intently at the frame as soon as it was dropped off. Now, finally for the most part, out of pain, she was able to smile again. And slowly she did, if not with some hesitation, and while her frame still shook and trembled as ever.

"It'll take a minute or two after Ratchet retrieves her little spark and releases it into her frame..." Knockout explained, talking his mate through the process. His expression was unmistakably one of excitement now, and he was more then likely holding onto her hand as tightly as he was, as much due to his own emotion as to be of any help to her. "Then she'll wake up, and we'll see her optics light. She'll be disoriented, a brand new bot who's got no idea what she is or what it all means to be here, and no doubt she'll make a right lot of noise because of it. But Ratchet will sit you up a little bit as soon as he can, so that you can hold her."

"Our very own little youngling..." Arcee said. Her voice was sightly muddled by the effects of sedative medication, and her optics were more tired than ever. But still she smiled with the wonder of her own child.

"First newspark born on Cyberton itself itself in seven centuries," Speedbreaker said, in her own amazement. She stood close to the head of the recharge station, with a firm hold on Arcee's other hand, and a grin on her face-plate.

"Come here, you," Ratchet mumbled chuckling lightly to the newspark while he worked to grab it gently with a specialized tool meant for exactly that. It would certainly not hurt the little one in the least, but still the flaring of the bright white energy field around the tiny lavender colored ball of light, let him know she still didn't like it. The tiny spark spun slowly, before a weak try at flattening itself out against its carrier's own spark, wanting the warmth of the known and familiar.

"And…. Gotcha..." the old medic exclaimed in relief. "Well aren't you a feisty little thing." He turned toward the tiny new frame with its open spark chamber cover, and took a step forward before he gave a cry of surprise, and his optics opened wider.

"She gave me a shock!" He explained, shaking his head just a little, before he gently lowered the glowing spark into her body.

"A shock…?" Bumblebee mumbled his question, dumbfounded as he waited for any further direction on what to do or hurry to fetch for the old bot. "You mean like an electrical..."

"A spark is mostly just energy," Ratchet explained quickly. He laughed slightly with amusement, as he shut and sealed youngling's delicate spark panel, over her tiny chamber, before turning to do the same for Arcee's. "I don't see why one couldn't give a bot a good zap. Though this is the first I've ever had one do it."

"Ratchet," 'Bee said after a second. The young bot's urgent and hushed tone brought him out of his cheerful musing at once. "The optics don't seem to be lighting up."

The young bot held a med scanner in his hand, and he scanned the child once quickly, and then slower and deliberately. The look on his face-plate was terrible, and he shook his head clearly helpless to understand what it was he was reading on the screen. But still he knew it was bad. Ratchet grabbed the scanner at once and scan the little one again. His tank flipped and his spark dropped. He felt the energon in his lines heat a little with his own determination, as he scooped the tiny frame up into his arms and flipped her over, so that she faced to the floor, laying over his bent arm.

"Ratchet…. what's happening?" Bumblebee questioned. He kept his voice down, continued to speak in the same hushed tone, aware enough to stop cause a panic just yet.

"The spark is not integrating with the frame," the old medic explained, in a hushed tone to match his student's. Balancing the little one as he was, he used his free hand to take hold of and let go of each of her her tiny limbs, taking a second to run each hand and foot in turn, with firm gentle pressure. Under his intakes he mumbled, "simplest things first, 'Bee remember. Let hands and feet feel warmth and touch, and the spark might reach out to it, becoming responsive."

"If this doesn't work..." Bee mumbled back, not daring to finish the thought before it could even become a question. Without needing to be told, he took one tiny metal foot in his hands and rubbed gently himself.

"Then we move on to slightly more drastic measures." Ratchet flipped the tiny frame over so she lay facing up again, only hoping all that movement would be enough to jar the spark into a response. "If we can get her responsive and starting to integrate within minutes, the little spark will not likely survive… We are not going to think about that yet."

"Ratchet, what's happening?" Arcee cried, loud over the whispers from too near by. The old bot didn't turn around. He couldn't take his attention from his tiny new patent for a second. But out of the very corner of his vision, he saw her struggle to move enough so that she could see something past her mate's should as he sat, still facing her parked on his cart. "Knockout! What's wrong with our youngling?"

"I'm… not sure yet," the red bot answered slowly, hesitant, but not exactly telling her a blatant lie.

"Please, tell me she's okay," Arcee said, begging, crying, the shaking that had began to subside starting again worse then before.

It was at that second that the tiniest of cries filled their corner of the room. It was barely a cry at all. More a tiny squeaking whine, that barely would have made an impression at all, have every bot near her not been so desperate to hear any sound from her at all. Ratchet gasped with relief, at the tiny frame beginning to move, though weakly in his loose hold of her. 'Bee sighed in clear and obvious amazement. Speedy, grinned a wide bright grin, and Knockout sat on his cart staring at the floor with tears of relief pouring from his optics.

But Arcee said or did not a thing in response to it all. Ratchet turned to find her flat on her back on the recharge station, both hands fallen from the grips of those that had held them, optics closed, and her entire body hopelessly limp where it had settled.

"Knockout," Ratchet demanded at once, as with barely a thought about it, he shoved the cart and its occupant backward a ways with a strong shove with his heavy left foot against the bottom of its frame, and gently but hurriedly placed the newborn on the red defector's lap. "You need to hold her. Keep her warm. She's still not in good condition."

"Arcee!" The red bot cried in shock. Nothing was right. It was all going bad, and fast. His optics traveled desperately in panic from his suddenly very ill mate, to his equally unwell new youngling, and where he knew he should have known far better what he should do about any of it, he instead just sat stunned on the cart, open mouthed in disbelief, head shaking with denial.

Ratchet had reached the side of the recharge station before anybot had even noticed, and he looked up from a quick scan of Arcee's frame, just as the monitor he'd attached to her not so long before, began to chime a dreadful warning. The old medic, actually cursed out loud, before, in a sudden small fit of rage at circumstances, he sent a nearby work table to the ground with one hit of his heavy strong fist. Then he cursed again once more, and nearly pulled cabinet door off accidentally in his desperate haste to gather more equipment.

"This can't happen," the old bot mumbled under his intakes still loud enough to be clearly heard. "Not her. Not now."

* * *

Knockout sat, staring down blankly at the child laying on his lap. In some distant corner of his own awareness, he saw Speedbreaker approach him quickly from the left side of the cart. He was vaguely aware as shifted the baby against his bent right arm so that he would hold her, and he was aware only then just how close he'd been to letting her fall. As the young bot backed up again, her own look of shock, grief and terror on her face-plate, he finally let himself look down at his newborn. She was tiny and beautiful. Big blue optics, lighted now, and they shown with surprising brightness. He allowed himself a tiny moment of joy to see that the optics were indeed the blue that he and his mate had both so hoped for. But she was still weak and unstable and her tiny arms and two tiny legs waved and kicked only slightly, while she cried softly with displeasure until he slowly tightened his hold on her.

"Ratchet, what's happening?" 'Bee's horrified voice filled the room, but somehow he sounded miles away.

"Arcee's spark is leaking its energy." Ratchet said back, in a clear mix of anger and devastation so unlike any old bot medic who might have succeeded in distancing himself. "She's already in spark arrest. I need to stop this. Now, or it's all over."

Knockout felt a strange and tiny movement against his bent arm, and before he consciously understood that he had even offer it, he felt the tiny youngling garb his extended finger. He made hmself focus again, and look down at the baby. Her frame had begun to take on it's colors now. A bright mix of very red and muted light blue, broken up beautifully by the strangest of swirling wide lines of pinkish purple.

He stared at her, transfixed and shocked, devastated, amazed, terrified and shaking. And the youngling, appearing to grow stronger as she warmed against his frame, gazed up at him with innocent, optics that appeared to stare at him, baffled by the chaos.

' _If something terrible did happen… Knockout, please say you would love her more than enough for both of us, raise her to be strong and smart and as funny as you are. Please say that you would always do your best..._

The words of his mate echoed through his processor like a speeding starship, and he wanted to yell out loud that he couldn't, that he wouldn't and that he didn't know how. He wanted to scream his denial, his terror and refusal of any of this as coolant tears fell unrelenting down his face-plate. But he made himself stop before he'd even opened his mouth, as he knew full well that a fit of his own rage and terror would help no one then.

'L _ove her more than enough for both of us…'_

Silently he pulled the child closer against him with his good arm, and wordlessly he promised that he already did.

 **Notes/ Okay, please, PLEASE don't kill me! All I can say** **for myself** **is trust me on this…**


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes/ Another long one. Two in a row now, and this one** **written** **and edited in about a week.** **This was a compromise between trying to hurry this one, because it really did seem a bit mean to eave it hanging where I did, and at the same time, not posting complete nonsensical garbage writing. As always thanks for the reviews and feedback on the last chapter. Once in a while I'll get a review that truly surprises me with just how invested a few readers are in this little fanfic project of mine. And I certainly got a couple of those this week.**

Knockout had wandered out into the fenced in courtyard out a rear door of the base. And he sat in it's furthest corner, parked on the mobility cart near the heavy high fencing that surrounded the place. The colorful youngling lay in his lap, head against his stronger and functional arm. And he might just have mistaken her for sleeping because of her stillness, had her optics not been open and gazing around the slightest bit.

"You like a bot in need of some company," Wheeljack's voice said from somewhere outside of the line of his sight.

And Knockout turned the cart slowly, to see the white wrecker in the doorway between the base and courtyard and taking a hesitant step forward. With a tiny shrug and then slight and tentative, he used his left hand to gesture as well as it could, roughly toward a bench near the place he had parked. The wrecker wandered over and immediately he sat himself down.

"Ratchet mentioned that you might just have forgotten your morning fuel again. He said he found last night's untouched on a worktable in the medbay too." Wheeljack was not exactly judging him. He seemed the last bot that would ever have bothered to judge anyone. But he certainly did sound concerned. His optics moved toward the youngling in her creator's lap. "You're no good to that kid if you drop from energy depletion."

"I'll refuel this evening," Knockout answered, meaning it. He understood at once that his teammate was right. And while he had no interest in fueling for his own benefit – he'd tried more than once and it only seemed to leave him feeling oddly sick – he would try in a second for the benefit of his child.

"Ya know we're gonna hold you to your word on that. No one around here is gonna let you just run yourself down. You're part of our team."

"Thank you."

"I'm surprised to find you away from the medbay."

"I needed some air. And it won't do her a bit of harm either." Knockout gestured with his optics and a nod of his head toward the youngling, now beginning to squirm on his lap.

The child was proving to be a quiet little bot, content to spend much of her waking time just curiously looking at anything could see with big blue optics. She was carried most of the day by her creator, and it was clear that she was perfectly happy with that arrangement, napping in his lap when she needed, staying warm against his body armor. She mostly cried only when she was hungry, and even then it was not by far the loud and obnoxious, steadily increasing screams generally associated with new younglings.

And sure enough, she now began to cry a little, a steady but not all so terrible kind of mechanical whine. Still almost calmly, she took a soft intake and then started over with another long robotic cry from her body, before she promptly shoved a tiny hand into her mouth, and made a now muffled crying sound around it.

"Ha. I never was much for younglings. But I gotta admit, that's just fragging cute," Wheeljack said with a slight laugh.

With a half-sparked smile on his face-plate over his teammate's comment, Knockout carefully shifted the child awkwardly with his right arm, so that eventually she lay resting on the left instead. He then reached down over the side of the cart with his right hand, and reached into a little basket that Speedbreaker had hung from the side of it, just behind the brake. He pulled out a bottle, capped and ready, and filled with a mix of specially refined energon and added liquid metals.

"Would you mind giving me a hand?" he asked. And Wheeljack, however obviously hesitant and unsure exactly what he was doing, reached over to grab the baby gently around the sides of her upper body so that he could shift her slightly more upright on her carrier's arm.

Knockout promptly stuffed the bottle top gently into her mouth, and she just as promptly began to thoroughly enjoy its contents. Her optics half closed as she drank happily.

"Any new word on Arcee?" Wheeljack asked. He leaned back a little on the bench, and looked from the red defector to the tiny child, and back again. His optics were suddenly sad.

"Still nothing new," Knockout shook his head slowly. It made him anxious just to be asked that question. And the fact that he was a medic, did little to make it easier to answer it honestly. Not when it was his own beloved bondmate he answered for. "Vitals are still stable. She's got basic processor function. She's not in danger of offlining right now, which is good. But she's still completely unresponsive, and she's showing no sign of waking up." He fell silent a moment, while he stared down at his little one, who still sucked weakly at her bottle while she fell into recharge. Slowly he spoke again, not bothering to hide the despair behind his words. "Hard to believe it's been three days already. One day's just kind of blurred into the next since…. Ratchet's told me that the longer it is until she wakes up, the less chance she will at all. Of course, I know that all to well myself, but I guess he thought he was helping somehow. There's always the risk of a sudden turn for the worst..."

"So," Wheeljack questioned slowly, looking at the little one again, and mercifully changing the subject. "What's her name, anyway? It's funny I never thought to wonder about that yet, but with all the chaos and everything that's happened..."

"She hasn't got a name yet," Knockout answered. The very fact made him anxious and almost ashamed. And to say it out loud, only made him feel stranger still about it. "Arcee and I just assumed we'd know what her name should be once she was born. Ratchet says she really needs a name, and of course I agree with him. I told him to give me the few more days, and if I have to, I'll do the best I can to choose a name by myself that I think Arcee would like."

Both bots were silent for a while. Each one sat still thinking his own thoughts and looking around at the courtyard around them. After some time, Wheeljack got to his feet.

"You take care of yourself, hey," he reminded Knockout, waiting for the red bot to nod his acknowledgment before he began to slowly back toward the doors that led inside.

But after a few hesitant steps, and clearly, as an afterthought, the white wrecker turned around again, and walked to sit back down on the bench he'd just left.

"I never talk about my family," he said, out of the blue. "It was always a right, slaggin' mess." He looked from Knockout to the youngling in his arms again, and shook his head slowly before he settled on looking down at the ground. "There were always data pads filled with pictures in the house I grew up in, and when I was a little bot, I'd constantly steal the pads from the shelf in the living room, so that I could look at the pictures. I always knew from those pictures that my creators had been so happy. Ha. You and Arcee always reminded me of everything I saw in those old pictures since the day you had so obviously gotten together." He was quiet for a moment, clearly appearing to gather his thoughts before he continued on talking. "My carrier died the day I was born. Complications of spark separation. I guess I was resented for it because I was the little bot my creator liked to beat up every night after he'd had too much to drink. My brother was still little when I came along. But I guess he learned a lot from creator, because he was bullying me since I could walk. We were still just little kids the day he shoved me out our fifth-floor window..."

Knockout stared down at his tiny youngling, now in light recharge on his lap, while he struggled a little to put the bottled back into the cart's side basket. She made tiny little noises for a second or two, while her hands waved around slightly, in slow meaningless movements. Her little mouth opened a little and then closed again, and she made a face that her creator was fast learned meant displeasure because she seemed to make it every time he moved to much when she wanted to nap. He marveled at just how much of himself he could see in the child, while at the same time, seeing just as much of his mate too. Her tiny head piece was particular impressive, and he thought that it, in particular, made her look like him, right down to the pointed ears sticking out on the sides. But her entire head and face, were Arcee's lovely light blue, and his bright red made up mostly only her lower arms and legs. And the purplish pink that covered each mid and upper limb in wonderful swirling patterns, was an obvious result of the codes for their combined colors mixing where they just as easily may have stayed entirely separated over the whole frame.

"You worry I'll only live to resent her if the unthinkable happens..." Knockout's words were partly a question and partly a statement.

"It's not unheard of. Listen; You and I may have gotten off on a bit of wrong foot not long after you first defected. But Arcee is my friend, and I like to think, you are too. I'd never tell a friend how to live their life. Who the frag I am to judge? I just wanted you to know there's always options and help out there if you need it. She's a beautiful innocent child and you've proven yourself a pretty well decent bot. We all know 'Bee and Speedy are slated to take possession of their own housing assignment soon enough. And they'll undoubtedly be bonded any day… If I know them, they'll have a house full of younglings before we know it. Surely if any bots have room in their sparks for just one more, it's..."

"I appreciate your advice and concern," Knockout replied, cutting him off before he could finish.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Arcee awoke in a world different from anywhere she had ever been. Her optics opened quickly and she found herself looking, from a semi-reclined and comfortable position, out across a field of shimmering colors as far as she could see. A heavy layer white fluffy clouds lower lower then she'd ever seen, made puffs of think mist that was tinted slightly but beautifully by the colors of the ground. Turning her head very slightly, making the tiniest of motions just to see at first if she could move, she caught a glimpse of cliff faces and wide overhanging ledges that jutted out from the heaviest part of the cloud layer. And there was a road too. That, she saw when she turned with slightly more strength, to look the other way. A smooth and perfect sleek and wide metal roadway that rolled and twisted off into the cloud layer with a high and wonderfully designed guardrail on both sides.

The place was not on Cybertron. She knew that much at once. Yet still it was recognizable, or at least vaguely and somewhat so, in it's design. Most certainly, some part of one of the many possible metal planets in the universe somewhere. Calm and curious, and aware only somewhere near the very edge of her consciousness that such feelings should not have made sense, she glanced around again at as much of the scenery that she could see, with a smile on her face-plate.

Her back was against something hard and smooth. She slowly came to understand that much. And whatever it was behind her, she was leaning half sitting against it, with both of her legs stretched out across the ground in front of her. It was not altogether uncomfortable, and it was with no great hurry that she slowly lifted an arm experimentally, before reaching her hand behind her to investigate without bothering to move enough to turn and look. Her fingers gently touched rough rubber and thick tire tread, and surprised she reached up to feel the curve of a wheel well, and the smoothness of a sleek metal form. Arcee moved then, still smiling and calm, to turn to look behind her.

She sat on the ground, now facing a parked red and blue semi-truck, and she understood at once that she had been sitting against the huge right front tire, with her head resting against the fender above, right over the shining chrome plate that followed the curve of the wheel well. She closed her optics then in disbelief at what, or rather who, it was she was seeing. And for a second she put off opening them again, fearing that when she did, he would no longer be there. But she did open them again and sure enough he was.

"Hello, Arcee," the voice, speaking from somewhere within the front of the semi-truck vehicle mode, was one she would have recognized anywhere.

"Optimus Prime," she exclaimed in disbelief, right before she burst into tears of overjoyed amazement.

The truck reversed slowly away from her, so that he could transform into his bot mode. And once he had done so, he stepped closer to her again, and reached down, offering his hand to her. She took it at once and found herself pulled easily to her feet, by the much larger bot.

"I… I don't know what to say..." Arcee said. She wiped ridiculously at the tears on her face-plate, sure she more closely resembled a sniffling youngling than an Auotbot soldier and commander. Yet somehow she couldn't find it in her to care exactly.

"I had imagined you likely wouldn't," Optimus replied with a chuckle under his intakes.

He actually laughed. Arcee found herself amused by that.

"Where are we?" she asked, looking around again. On her feet, she could see just slightly further over the endless field of color and low cloud over.

"Inside the well of the Allspark. Far more specifically the north-east region of the realm of the Primes."

"I can't possibly be allowed to be here..."

"I challenge you to name one bot that's never broken a single rule." Optimus Prime, chuckled again lightly, and slowly he began to walk forward, leading Arcee along beside him gently by an arm.

"Point taken," Arcee conceited, easily enough. And she laughed slightly herself, amazed by his laughter. Walking across the ground with slow and leisurely steps, she was suddenly amazed at the solid and real surface under her feet. The place and the state of being she was in now, was just as real and physical, as the world and the state she knew. And she wondered silently why it was that that didn't bother her when she knew on some level it should have.

"We all miss you," she said slowly as the two of them walked together out across the field of colors. The bright metals reflected the light of the sun above all around them, giving off the illusion that she walked through endless little bands of color and many tiny light prisms. "I'm sure most of Cyberton does. You were a true hero to your people. Team Prime and the Autobot army among them of course, but it extended so much further."

"That may well be so," Prime answered, in a tone of confidence that was so familiar it nearly made her cry again. "But the Autobots have done so much on your own. It's a new age for Cybertron now, Arcee. My wish was always that the people would simply enjoy it, and make it a wonderful age indeed. History need not be doomed to repeat itself. Always remember that on behalf of our world."

The cloud layer in the place they currently walked was lower then usual. Barely twice the height of Arcee's head from the ground. And through she knew it was impossible, she knew that even those impossibly low clouds were oto far to reach, she reached up with her free arm, extending it and the fingers of her hand as far as they could go, giving a silly giggle of amusement as she pretended like a child to reach for the clouds. Most unexpectedly, the Prime lifted her from the ground, arms lightly around the middle of her body, before he shifted his weight and the position of both his hands, so that he could quickly catch her feet on his upturned hands and shove her up and forward, sending her flying.

Arcee had used such a move along with her team, for years in combat situations. And she'd always found some sense of quiet amusement at being uniquely small enough to be the one of them able to be easily launched into air for impressive flying flips with blasters firing. But now there was no call for her weaponry – and she didn't know if her currently state of being even _had_ active weapons. Instead she extended both outreached hands as soon as she'd pulled her frame into a perfect mid air flip. And with both hands reaching while she flew as long and as far as physics would allow for as a grounder, she touched the think white puffs of the clouds. It felt exactly as she'd thought it would. Like barely anything impressive at all. Just heavy water vapor and humidity that clung momentarily to her body. But she landed on the ground, absorbing the impact on bent knees, laughing at the simple fact that she of any bot, had done that.

"I'm bonded to a 'con defector," she said, a second after the two had begun to idly walk again, with no obvious destination in mind and only more colors and mist all around them. She wondered if it mattered, slightly feared it may, and hoped it would not. In any case, disclosing the information honestly at that exact moment felt both right and important.

"I'm well aware," Optimus answered at once. He glanced down at her while they walked. But his blue optics showed no hint of any disapproval of the matter. He nodded his head a little, and appeared to consider his words just as carefully as ever, before he spoke again. "I must say, Knockout has both impressed and somewhat surprised me with his success in starting over on our side." He paused, standing still and stopping Arcee along with him, with his gentle hold on her arm again. He gazed down at her with a look that was clearly amazement on his face-plate, before he said "I'm entirely convinced, that it was his genuine love for an Autobot that took him as far as he's gotten."

"There was a little one," Arcee said, remembering that for the first time. And a sudden sadness invaded her happy amazement at the entire strange encounter. "It all went badly. I… I don't know what became of…."

But sad and lost as she had quickly become, Optimus Prime only placed a big strong hand on her small shoulder panel, he chuckled again with a tiny grin forming at the corner of his mouth.

"It's safe to say, Knockout loves that tiny girl, just as much as he loves you," he said simply. "He can't do much for her, without a bit of help. But still, holding the youngling the best he can, letting her grab his hands, and hearing her cry… those are the moments he can still smile today."

"She… she survived?" Arcee's optics lit up at that, and the Prime nodded confirmation.

"She did. And she'll surely be a fighting little fireball, just like her carrier.

"I… I never even got to meet her…." Arcee said, coolant coming to her optics as the realization hit her. Crushed by her sudden grief. "Her spark was quickly dying in her frame. I… remember screaming for a minute… then I couldn't hold my optics open and somewhere a monitor alarm was ringing..."

"I think it's time I sent you back home," Prime said. His voice as stern and determined as she remembered, but his optics were kind and understanding as always.

"I could go back?" Arcee whispered the question, looking up at him in surprise, through her coolant tears.

"Of course you can go back." He chuckled again. "Full on spark arrest is never a condition to be taken lightly. But you know Ratchet more than well enough to know his tendency for refusing to fail. Your frame is doing a fine job of recharging, and no one knows for sure if you are going to live or not. Only you can answer that question for them all now. But no, you haven't taken that last finally fall yet."

"Strange to think that not so long ago, with cybertron at the height of the war, going back there again would have been the very last thing I might have wanted..."

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

"You know, I think I'm gonna miss living here," Bumblebee mused as he walked the corridor, hand in hand with Speedbreaker, and with Bulkhead tromping along behind the two of them. He glanced around at dingy gray walls and wondered for a second if perhaps he was out of his processor for thinking such a thought.

"What's there to miss about a base of operations?" Speedbreaker questioned with a laugh. "And a small and outdated one at that." She turned so that she could walk backwards down the corridor, quickly taking the other of his hands in her free one. And playfully she pulled him forward as she walked. "Our place will be out first home together. And it will be _ours!_ "

"Your new apartment will be the first time 'Bee's ever had a real home," Bulkhead said.

"It's true," Bumblebee explained. "Because I was born on Cybertron after the war had started, and because I joined the Autobots so young, I moved from a youngling center right onto a military base..." He felt on some level like he ought to be sad. But he'd never been that type of bot, and besides, in his mind, things were what they were.

"We'll make our place beautiful," Speedy said smiling. And 'Bee laughed at once grinning a little.

"We'd have a much simpler time making it beautiful if we only had some furniture and decor. Speedy, why haven't you picked anything out yet? That's what our start up allowance is for."

"I don't care about picking out nice furniture, 'Bee. You know well I'd settle for any old junk, at least for now."

"I promised her creators I'd give her the best life I could," Bumblebee said to Bulkhead, with a shake of his head. "That I'd give her everything she's ever wanted within my means to do so, if they'd only give us their blessing. And wouldn't you know it, she doesn't let me give her a thing."

"I don't need _things,"_ Speedy said, with a giggle and grin, before her look turned serious. "I've never had things. All I need to really be happy, aside from having you of course, are scraps and tools to work with and somewhere to build and experiment."

"Then you shall have all of the above,"'Bee answered. He swung their joined hands between them, as they kept on walking.

"Two young bots, starting out on your own, building a life… It's been too long since anybot had the chance just to do that much," Bulkhead mused, oddly thoughtful. He grinned then and smacked 'Bee playfully, if not far too hard in his upper arm with a big green fist. "I for one am happy for the both of you. When exactly are you moving anyway? Of course I'm plannin' on helping ya move stuff."

"Thanks 'Bulk," Bee answered. "The place is ours in ten days." He considered a moment and his voice turned serious as he added slowly, "we were going to postpone our move, because we still don't know what's going to happen with Arcee. She's pretty much my sister, and Speedy is one of her best friends… But Ratchet told us both we can't just be putting life on hold, and we decided he's right."

Rounding a bend in the corridor, the trio of bots spotted Knockout slowly coming toward them on his cart, with a far away look on his face-plate and the tiny youngling on his lap. Speedbreaker waved, and both 'Bumblebee and Bulkhead nodded greetings to him. But the red bot was clearly too distracted even to notice any of them at first. It was only when he came closer and nearly nicked Bulkhead with the side of the cart, causing him to stumble sideways, and nearly bang into the wall before he could catch himself, that he noticed any one of them. Knockout mumbled an apology with a little shake of his head.

A second later though, his distracted, far away expression turned to a frustrated near scowling look. And he stared down to the floor, over the frame of his sleepy child, and mumbled, "don't ask."

"Don't ask what?" 'Bee questioned, both concerned and confused. He wondered quickly if perhaps he must have missed word about a situation he should have been aware of already. "Knockout, what's happened?"

"Nothing's happened," the red defector mumbled. He didn't exactly look up, but at least he wasn't so close to full on scowling at any of them anymore. "Just… _don't ask._ Don't ask how I am. If I'm okay. If I've remembered to refuel this morning. I've quickly gotten tired of giving the same old polite and half way to lying answer to every bot I see lately. Even Soundwave asked this morning. That was just...odd."

"We won't ask," 'Bee said, instantly understanding the reason for his teammate's frustration. He suddenly felt some slight remorse at realizing his himself had just just as guilty in the past five days, of the very thing that had finally driven the bot to annoyance. "But if you want to tell us, without the lying for the sake of social politeness..."

"It's already been five days," the red bot mumbled. The despair was more than clear in his tone, and when he finally looked up again it was just as clear in his optics. "Arcee's still not showing a single sign of waking up, and I know she should have by now. More than once, I've heard the good old line about how at least she's still alive and that's always good news. Yes, it is good news. Of course! Every day for the last five days, I've thanked Primus that she hasn't taken that feared turn for the worse, gone back into spark failure and gone offline on us all. But every day she stays in this unresponsive state of not dying, but not exactly living either, the more we need to face the reality that her processor may well be damaged. We can't know if it was, and if so how badly until she wakes up." Knockout sat a second on the cart, silent and considering is words, while his optics began to burn with rage that each bot knew was not directed at them or anyone in particular. With his right right, he held his youngling closer to his frame, gently in spite of his inner raging, just as though he feared he might just lose her too at any second if he dared to let her go. Finally he spoke again, and this time his words were far less mumbling and far more something that bordered on shouting. "More than one bot on this base has told me at least that would be better than her being dead. Ratchet's said it more than once. I want to think they're right. But no one really knows what it's like. They don't live it. How could I hope she lives even if it means a state for her that could be far worse than mine!"

"I'm not about to tell you I think I understand, because we all know not one of us really does," 'Bee said, simply.

"Wanna know what I think?" Speedbreaker put in. Then she took a step closer to the parked cart, with an optimistic smile on her face-plate, answering before the red bot even answered her. "I think there's little sense in worrying about your greatest fears coming true before you know for sure they already have. If they do, you face it then and cross the bridge together that's now in front of both of you. And if the thing you fear most never comes true, then you were wrong in a situation where it was great to have been wrong. And you get to walk… or roll… away relieved because it's all good when it could have been terrible."

Knockout just stared at the little chrome and orange bot for several long seconds, taking in her words, processing and so obviously understanding her very fair advice. He smiled a little, as he nodded his head in silent thanks to her for it, before his face-plate began once more to show his frustration.

"Some days..." he mumbled, looking each of the three bots in the optics in turn, "I just wish I could throw things."

The child snuggling sleepily on her creator's lap, opened her half closed optics wide. And her little mouth opened in a huge baby yawn that appeared to momentarily consume the entirely lower half of her tiny blue face-plate. All four of the others chuckled at that. Even Knockout, in his despairing mood, was unable to help himself. And the baby began to babble the simplest of noise, while she wiggled and looked up, curious.

"So why don't we?" Bulkhead said thoughtfully, interrupting the momentary quiet.

"Why don't we what?" knockout questioned, looking up at the big green bot. Now it was his turn to be confused by an out of nowhere statement.

"Why don't we go somewhere and throw things?" Bulk' elaborated, considering.

"Bulkhead," Speedbreaker mumbled at him under her intakes, "he can't possibly..."

"I'm not so sure he couldn't," 'Bee said back quickly. He actually laughed then as he looked his damaged teammate in the optics, took a second to smile at the youngling, and then turned a strange look on the others. Immediately he turned back around, grabbed Speedy playfully by the hand, yanking her gently forward as he took off at a near run through the corridor.

"Come on," he urged as he kept right on going. Speedbreaker of course hurrying behind him and laughing, since he still held her by the hand. But Bulkhead and Knockout took a second to exchange looks of baffled confusion before each of them silently shrugged and moved to follow.

Bumblebee lead the little group of his friends outside of the base, and along a narrow trail that led out behind and away from it. He hurried uphill, following the path, and checking twice on the way to assure himself that it was indeed, as he had assumed, suitable for Knockout's cart. The gradually upward leading path, he discovered, was not only safer and even more well suited to the cart when he had thought. But Knockout navigated it so well on the cart, while holding his youngling, that it appeared he already knew, strangely, where he was going.

The incline evened out again at a place that stood on flat ground close to the edge of a cliff that overlooked the fast expanding city of returning bots. And 'Bee exchanged a look of triumph and a grin with Bulkhead, who now clearly knew what it was he'd been thinking, when he'd lead them all there. And behind rolling up beside them hesitantly, to park a seemingly dangerously short distance from the cliff's edge, Knockout only gave a baffled look.

"Arcee showed me this place," the red bot said, explaining while he shifted his child slightly, just as thought he she might want to see and comprehend the place herself. "This was always 'our' cliff. Our place to run off and be alone to talk and plan and daydream. She told me she was carrying one night up here…"

"I never knew you had a 'place,'" Bulkhead said. His voice was serious for a second, before he just as quickly broke out in a laughing grin. "Ha. I think me and 'Bee found it first, long before Arcee. This is the place we used to come all the time, just to chuck rocks."

"Why would you want to be chucking rocks?" Knockout questioned them both. His expression was both curious and confused.

Bumblebee shrugged, before he sat down on the ground, close to edge.

"Lots of reasons I guess. To curse the pointless war that we thought might never end. To curse the 'cons, and the mess both sides had made. To curse our lives and the childhoods we'd never had."

"Thowin' rocks is better than thowin' punches and breaking stuff..." Bulkhead said, thoughtfully. "Definitely better than just staying mad at stuff you can't change."

The big green bot bent to grab a large heavy jagged chuck of metal from the ground at his feet, and standing up again, he turned his body so that he stood in a direction not right in the path of the city below. And after winding up for a good throw, he hurled the thing over the cliff, sending it flying through the air, before they all heard it eventually land with a little thump some great distance away. He snatched up the youngling carefully from Knockout's lap, and carrying her a few steps with the awkwardness of a bot that had clearly never even touched a tiny youngling in his life, he handed her to Speedy, who immediately held her tightly against her frame, with a glare of disbelief at her friend's terrible carrying technique.

Bulkhead bent again, to grab another metallic rock from the ground close by, and this one he pointedly placed in Knockout's right hand. Few bots would ever have been able to throw a rock of that size as far as Bulk' had done. And Knockout was still barely able to throw a lightweight ball, and he'd never tired with anything heavier than that. But still he was not entirely incapable of it. The rock flew away from his hand after he had pulled his arm back as far as he could and let it go. It hit the ground not far from his feet, and proceeded to bounce over the edge of the cliff, to disappear somewhere below. Immediately Bulkhead grabbed another one to hand to him, and he flung that one over too.

Bee' joined in, if only because he saw no reason not to, picking up a decent sized chuck of metal and flinging it over the cliff as hard as it could. He grabbed another one and threw it further than the first. Bulkhead picked up two more, one in each of his big hands. One he handed Knockout, and the other he threw with all of his might. For a while the three of them just stood and sat by the edge of the cliff, each silently flinging rocks as hard as they could. Bumblebee's and Bulkhead's flying far off in into the distance somewhere, and Knockout's just sort of lighting bouncing, though the effort was for him, just as great as the effect of either of the others.

"I should have known she was in trouble," Knockout finally yelled at no one, as he tossed this forth metallic rock further than he'd managed to yet. "I listened when she told me she'd be fine and let's wait to comm Ratchet. She was already in serious trouble and I never knew. Her and the baby could both have been dead, and it could have been my fault!"

"It wasn't..." Speedbreaker said quietly behind him. But Knockout only shook his head, tossed the rock that Bulk' handed him, and sat on the cart, screaming incoherently into the air in front of him for a second while coolant streamed down his face-plate.

"It might have been," he mumbled, angry and despairing again all at once. "Everything I knew about carrying and reproductive medicine… it was all just theory memorized from years of studying data pads. No youngling had been born on Cybertron for three centuries before I ever worked in the field. I can tell you, real life is not a fragging pile of information on a data pad."

"Hey. Ratchet's been working Arcee's entire case with me nearby and training," 'Bee said, seriously. He grabbed Knockout by his shoulder's and made him look him in the optics. "He's never once implied anyone was ever at fault at all, least of all you. He said there was no way anyone could have known…."

"Why does the world just not get to be fair," Knockout mumbled in reply to that. And the others knew at once that he spoke not only of Arcee and the unexpected turn their child's birth had taken, but of so many other things too.

The red bot threw another rock, this one slightly heavier than the others he'd been handed, just as soon as Bulkhead handed it to him. And soon the other two joined back in again as well. All three yelled their frustrations, the destruction of their world, the destruction of their innocence long before its time, the loss of countless loved ones, the death of their dreams… And after a good while of this all three stopped where they were, tired of the physical exertion, and rid of anything else to rage and shout over.

For a while the little group just sat and stood around on the cliff top, looking out over the landscape of slow going but steady repair work, and the growing city. And they chatted calmly but serious about tragedies and possibilities. Speedbreaker held the youngling a while longer, sitting on the ground, with the baby cradled snug and happy in her arms. Knockout clear didn't mind at all that she continued to hold her for him, once she'd made a joking comment about how she promised she would give her back. She sure enough handed her back after another minute or two, settling the youngling gently into her creator's lap and smiling as the child snuggled in against his arm and his body armor. Speedy joked then about wanting her own, and 'Bee laughed along with her, wondering all the while if she was truly only kidding around.

He may have asked her outright, if she'd been serious. But he was not sure he was ready to hear that answer just yet. It was a sudden and unexpected beeping from his personal comm link that saved him from needing to just then.

 _'_ _Bee. Please tell me Knockout is with you, or that you_ _at least know where he is,'_ Ratchet's voice said urgently over the comm. _'_ _It would appear he's turned his commlink off. I need to reach him at once.'_

 _'He's with us.'_

 _'Good. Tell him I need him in the medbay,_ _the second he can get here, and to bring the little one with him. Let him know this is_ _not bad news_ _! And 'Bee, tell that_ _bot to keep his fragging comm link turned on. We have 'em for good reasons!'_

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

"Ratchet did say the news is not bad news," Knockout mumbled to the youngling he carried while he drove the cart, supporting her securely with his one functional arm, just as he'd quickly gotten good at doing since she'd been born. He mumbled to her, talking to her just as he would if she'd actually been old enough to understand a word he said, mostly to simply assure himself with his own words spoken out loud. The tiny bot's big blue optics opened wide in response to his voice though of of course his words themselves were meaningless. And she gazed up at him smiling her first smile.

"Well, here goes," Knockout said to the little one. And as the child went right on smiling her little baby smile, of perfect innocence, he asked himself exactly what it was he feared he might find behind the door.

It slid open as he rolled closer to it, and he rolled into the medbay. Without even a need to think about it anymore, he took the path he'd spent the last five days taking time and again. Along the right side wall, past repair table's five and seven, around recharge station two, and careful to not roll over the curtain that hung down onto the floor, and surrounded recharge station three, closed although that cubicle was not occupied. In the far back right corner was another closed curtain surrounding another recharge station – number five. And it was behind there, inside the little cramped cubicle it made up, that he'd spent so much of the past days, sitting on his parked cart, keeping his youngling warm against his frame, taking endlessly to his mate who never showed a single sign of hearing him.

At that moment, the curtain moved quickly, pulled and tugged on by somebot on the other side of it. And Ratchet hurried out into the open space of the medbay to meet him. The grin on the old bot's face-pate was unmistakable, and Knockout only stared at him a moment, wide optic'd, hopeful and speechless.

"Arcee woke up a short while ago," Ratchet said. He chuckled just a little and continued to smile about his wonderful news. "I was busy, doing some maintenance on her fuel line hook up, and she opened her optics, and mumbled at me to leave her alone."

"She's a bit sleepy as you can imagine," He continued. "But she can talk and understand. I did basic assessments of processor function and she passed each one perfectly. I'll do a far more advanced assessments when she's stronger, but I'm pretty confidant she's perfectly functional. She was a bit disoriented, probably still is a bit. But you know of course that's quite understandable. She was asking me repeatedly at first where you were. I was able to get her to co-operate and work with me a bit in her disoriented state, still waking up state, by promising that surely you were on your way." The old medic stepped aside then, pulling on the certainly slightly, so that Knockout could easily maneuver the cart through the gap left at a corner.

Arcee lay on the recharge station, just as she had for previous days. But unlike anytime before, her optics were open and she smiled sleepily as soon as she saw her bondmate roll himself on the cart, into her field of vision.

"Ratchet told me you'd be right back," she said, clearly and with that same sleepy smiling look on her face.

"Of course," Knockout answered, calmly returning her smile. "I'm sorry I wasn't here when you woke up."

"That's okay." Arcee was able to gave a tiny laugh under her intakes, and she just kept on smiling at him. "I think I can forgive you just this once." The smile quickly left her face-plate then, and she groaned softly while she blinked her optics as if to shake of a fog of confusion. "I… I think I might have threatened Ratchet. Told him I was going to blow his head off, and I'm pretty sure I might have punched him in the face. I think I mistook him for a 'con or something..."

"You'd hardly be the first bot to ever deck a medic, and threaten his life. And you'll hardly be the last I'm sure. He didn't seemed bothered about it in the least. He didn't even mention it to me."

"Ratchet said it's been days since..."

"It has been. How do you feel?"

"Not so bad at all. I guess I should almost feel much worse than I do, but I'm quire okay."

The last traces of Arcee's disoriented state had faded away while the two of them talked that little bit. Far more awake now, she moved a little, shifting her body around on the recharge station getting comfortable and frowning a second at the monitors wires still connecting her to machinery somewhere behind her. When Knockout purposefully backed the cart up a bit, a grin spreading across his face-plate as he did so, she watched him until finally she could see the quiet and curious newborn in his lap.

"That's… our baby," she mumbled, amazed.

Knockout only sat nodding his head silently and grinning.

"And he's been doing a fine job with her too," Ratchet exclaimed, the second he walked back in past the just slightly opened curtain. He smacked the red defector on the shoulder panel lightly in approval.

"I wanna hold her," Arcee said pleadingly.

Knockout had no way to hand the youngling off to anyone. His functional right arm was not strong enough to hold the child balanced on it to in order to do so. And anyway that never have been entirely safe. When anybot wanted to take her from him, they all just tended to carefully snatch her up from his lap, and carry her around or sit with him awhile, before they leaned down to out her back into his lap again, where he could support her again with his arm without the ability to reach to grab her. He sat for a second wondering with a falling spark how it was exactly he could pass her to his bondmate, while she lay on the recharge station, presently incapable of a reach any less awkward than his, thought for a very different reason. But Ratchet came to their aid at once. Lifting the child gently and placing her gently into her carrier's waiting arms as soon as he had tipped the top section of the recharge station up a little into a reclined sitting position.

She held the child tight against her frame immediately. And for a moment she just stayed that way, as though she were memorizing the feel of the tiny bot's weight against her body. After several long moments, she shifted her again so that the baby lay face up in her arms, and she just studied her features, with coolant tears forming in the corners of her optics.

"She looks so much like you," Arcee said to her mate, laughing a little.

"I always thought she looks far more like you," Knockout answered, slowly. "She's even got your optic color."

"What?" Arcee looked again at the little one's face, and as she did, as if on cue, the youngling turned her head, opening both of her optics wide in her typical strangely curious look. "Oh! They're blue!"

"We did both hope she'd have your blue optics..."

"She's so beautiful. You were right. She's perfect. I know we were so close to losing her..."

"She sure showed us! Little thing just needed a bit to get her barrings and she was just fine. She's eating like crazy. And you see how curious she is! I never knew younglings this new noticed the world like this…."

"What's her name?" Arcee asked, interpreting her mate's proud rambling. Ratchet stepped closer to her again, and obviously feeling confidant in doing so, he began the process of unhooking her from the monitoring set up. He reached once carefuly and calmly around the tiny child she held, in order to keep on working without any trouble at all. And she only sat quiet, a look on her face-plate showing anticipation of an answer.

"I… I haven't named her yet," Knockout said with sudden hesitation.

It occurred to him for the first time, to wonder how exactly she would feel about the matter of a still unnamed child at five days old. Would she be let down and annoyed with his not simply making the important decision of a name himself, because of course a child did really need a name. Or might she be relived that he had waited, and not chosen without her. But Arcee only shook her head in obvious disbelief over it.

"A youngling needs to have a name," she muttered in a statement of the obvious, and continued to shake her head a little. With another smile, she finally took her optics away from the baby, to look back at her mate again. "If you had named her without me – which you probably should have done, but I think in your place I would have waited too – what would you have called her?"

"CyberShock," Knockout said, surprisingly decisive. It was the name he'd began to consider the most, as time dragged on and the need to decide on one by himself seemed to loom closer. Quickly he explained. "Named partly for our world itself. The world we are rebuilding, and where she can grow up without a fraction, and simply be Cybertronian..."

"And then her first ever independent action, was to zap the medic good, before she was even in her frame…" Arcee laughed her understanding. Her optics went back to their youngling again, and she smiled at her. The baby smiled right back.

"I love the name," Arcee said, considering a moment. "It's powerful, bold, one of a kind… all fitting for her. And judging by that smile of hers, I'd guess that she likes it too."

"If you'd like an old bot's opinion, I think it's a fine name," Ratchet put in with a chuckle under his intakes.

"That settles it then," Arcee smiled at her teamsmates and the youngling each in turn. "She has an official name we can add to the registry." She sighed and leaned back against the back of the recharge station. "It''ll be wonderful just to get out of here. Recharge in our recharge station, right beside the youngling basket. We'll talk her for a walk, read her stories of old Cybertron. I can't wait to feed her and see how much she likes a bath..."

"Oh no," Ratchet exclaimed, before Knockout had the chance to do so himself. "Now don't you go getting into such a hurry! I'd really like to keep you here to rest a few more days."

"A few days?" Arcee cried. Her optics opened wide with unexpected dread and it appeared she would almost cry. "Ratchet no! I'm not sick. I'm not hurt or damaged. I've missed days already and I just want to go and take care of my child."

Knockout had been so close to seconding the old medic's opinion. He'd have given it himself first, had he not been beaten to it. But now, looking at his mate, with the desperate look on her face-place, as she held tightly to the baby, he reconsidered his first instinct about her care. He turned a little on his cart, and grabbed the old bot gently by the arm with his right hand.

"Let me take her back to our living space," he said seriously. "She can just as easily rest in there, and I'll see to it that she does. There's so much I can't do, and I know that. But I do have medical training. I'll know if she needs to come back and if she does I'll make sure that's exactly what happens. Arcee doesn't want to be here, and we both know we can't make her do anything she doesn't want to do. She'd only violate your medical orders…."

"She's certainly headstrong. I won't deny that," Ratchet mumbled in reply. He looked her over once with his optics, as she looked at him, pleading silently.

The old bot huffed under his intakes and declared, "fine. I'll offer a compromise – and only because I know I can't exactly keep a carrier away from caring for her youngling. But..." he held his hand up then to indicate that he was far from finished, and glared at her, in a look that could easily have made the most battle hardened of bots tremble, "you are staying long enough for me to do a complete and detailed assessment of processor function first. And then you are going to refuel. Then you can go. But you're going to be careful. Rest. Lots of it. No risky behavior. No training. No running. No transforming. No shooting. No lifting of anything even slightly heavier than your baby. I mean it!"

"Ratchet, thank you," Arcee mumbled, meaning it. Her nodding head showed that she agreed to follow his list of conditions of her discharge.

"Don't mention it." The old bot grumbled, frowning. His cranky expression quickly dissolved though into one of his rarely seen grinning smiles, and he stood facing her with both of his arms out streatched unexpectedly. "Now, give me that youngling for a minute. I want a turn at playing with the newest little Cybertonian, before I get you to stand up and then walk a straight line, to be sure you actually can, instead of me just assuming so."


	36. Chapter 36

**Second try at posting this tonight! First time I reposted a duplicate earlier chapter my mistake... If all goes well, I've now got it all sorted out.**

 **So I took some very good advice from MadnessJones, on the last chapter. It was pointed out in a review, that the start of the chapter does kind of ruin the tention ofr th erest of it. And after thining it about it, I decided to rearrage things just a bit. Still the same chapter. Just a new scene order. And thanks a heap pointed that out. I fully reallized, you're right.**

When Arcee awoke from her recharge, she found herself alone on the recharge station. The blue covering was pulled loosely around her, but the far side, usually occupied by her bondmate, was both empty and had cooled off in his absence. She remembered that she had fallen into recharge early and without him, trying hard to wait for him but unable to stay awake. She was vaguely aware though of having half woken up more then once in the night, and each time she had, her frame had been warm, pressed against the familiar warmth of his much larger frame.

Sitting up slowly, she wondered to herself when exactly he had been helped off the cart. And for that matter when he had been helped back on again, and by who. Just the fact that she hadn't woken up either time, made her wonder if perhaps she ought to be at least slightly concerned. And she shook her head a little, looking around the room, ashamed of her sleepiness.

CyberShock recharged soundly in the tiny basket next to the recharge station. She was flat out on her back, with two little legs bent slightly at the knees, one arm flung to the side, and a tiny silver hand in a loose little fist and shoved partly into her mouth. Arcee had put the baby in there before she lay down herself, and she realized with amazement, that the little one had clearly slept through the entire night.

"Knockout?" Arcee called, whispering so as not to wake her daughter from her recharge. Looking around the room again, she spotted a pair of thin trails of water, leading out of the wash station across the room and toward the door out to the hallway. And Arcee shook her head again, taken aback, realizing they roughly matched the width of the rubber tires on Knockout's mobility cart.

She moved slowly to swing her legs over the side of the recharge station, but before she could do so, the door to the living space slid open. Knockout rolled into the room driving the cart with his usual awkward efficiency at it. On his lap he balanced a small stack of data pads, and on top of those sat two full energon containers. He steadied the whole lightly wobbling stack with his right hand, and a silly grin spread across his face-plate.

"I brought you your morning fuel," he said, so clearly pleased with himself. He rolled around to her side of the recharge station and held a container out to her, with hand movements just barely coordinated enough to not knock the second container off the data pad stack in the process.

"Thank you," Arcee answer with a tiny laugh, as she took a quick sip from her container while sitting on the recharge station with her legs comfortably out of front of her. She resisted the urge to make a face, once she discovered from the unexpected taste of the energon, that he had brought her an over concentrated near medical grade mix that she had never exactly liked to drink. With another laugh she added lightly, "you do know though that I'm perfectly capable of walking to to get my own energon..."

"I know you are," Knockout grinned back. He lifted his own container from the top of the data pad stack, and set it down on the nightstand beside him so that he could then pick up the pads one at a time and set then down on the edge of the recharge station, before he picked up his fuel container again to drink from it. "But you need rest, so let's let you rest a while longer. Besides the baby is recharging. Let's let her recharge. I'm just as capable of rolling to get it as you are of walking anywhere."

"What did you bring me?" Arcee questioned with a laugh and a smile, as she moved to look over the pads.

"My photo album!" she cried, excited when she recognized the one on the top of the little stacked pile. "Thank you for bringing that for me."

"I thought you might want it," Knockout replied smiling right back at her. "I know how much you love looking at those photo files." He gestured to the rest of the stack explaining, "a couple of fiction books. You don't enjoy much reading I know. But that should give you something to do for a while anyway. And… I brought you some work. This week's status reports to catch up on. If I'm honest, I don't like the thought of you in here busy with pads upon pads of Autobot military business all over the recharge station, you know full well you're supposed to be resting on instead. But Ratchet warned me you might just go mad if you don't at least have something..."

In her little recharging basket, CyberShock began to fuss a little under gentle intakes while her free hand waved and wiggled, and she sucked lightly on the one in her mouth. Still sitting on the recharge station, Arcee took one more quick sip from her fuel container, and leaned to peek over the side of the basket, as the little's one's optics half way opened.

"Well it would seem she wants to refuel with us this morning," Knockout mused with a laugh, as his mate lifted the youngling from her basket, and held her tightly against her frame, bouncing her slightly in her arms.

"It's hardly surprising," Arcee answered back, smiling while she held their child. "She did recharge through the night. She's got to be hungry by now."

When Knockout reached into the little carrying basket mounted on the side of his cart, and pulled out a bottle she hadn't noticed that he'd been carrying with him, Arcee blinked her optics in momentary surprise. Talking the bottle from him, when he handed it to her, she looked at his side basket, and finally noticed its entire contents – a second already mixed bottle of the youngling's specially made energon formula, a folded pink blanket ready to wrap her in, and a soft fluffy rag they used to wipe her face-plate and mouth with, plus his drawing screen and a couple of pens.

Arcee nodded toward the full carrying basket, impressed, and smiled as she offered their child her fuel. Cybershock sucked on the bottle top with a half sparked effort for a second or two, before she began to fuss again with far greater urgency than before. Arcee adjusted the child's position, tilting her slightly more upright and offered the bottle again. A couple more half sparked little sucks, and she was fussing again, two tiny legs kicking while she cried her long robotic little cry.

"Here, let me try to feed her," Knockout offered, calm and still smiling. "You really need to refuel too."

Arcee was about to protest. To argue that she could take care of the little one just fine. That she wanted to do so. But she knew full well that he was right. She was still recovering, and as much as she may not have wanted to admit it, she was still in a weakened state because of it. Somewhat reluctantly, she moved to sit on the edge of the recharge station so that she could settle the youngling onto his lap, her little head against his bent left arm. And when he then reached for the bottle she passed it to him quickly.

When he glared at her in mock warning, with a badly hidden smile on his face-plate all the while, she took a fast hint, pulled her legs back up onto the recharge station, and sat back against the pile of extra pillows that had been stuffed behind her head. When he continued to do it even after she had sat back, she picked up her fuel container from it's place on the night stand and took a drink from it. And she stared in dismay as CyberShock snuggled happily against her creator's left arm, and began to suck hungrily on the top of the bottle he offered her.

"She likes you far better than me." Arcee said. Immediately she took another drink from her container, hoping to hide the disappointment she felt at that. But Knockout only smiled assurance as he fed their child.

"She likes you just fine," he said. "Of course she does. You're her carrier. She just knows me better is all. Or at least she's far more used to taking a bottle from me"

"I'm practically a stranger to my own youngling..." Arcee mumbled. A strange sense of dread and anxiety began to build, as she began to imagine the damage her days of unconsciousness and incapacity following the youngling's birth, may have done to any relationship she might have with the child.

"You aren't a stranger to her at all. Not like you might think," Knockout said smiling, as he explained. "She sat with me every day in the medbay. I'd hold her on my lap for hours, sitting beside your recharge station talking to you and wondering if perhaps you could hear a thing I was saying. And she'd stay awake for a while, with her optics wide open, staring at you with this strange look that I could swear was understanding. And she'd make a strangest, sweetest little noise each time I took her to see you, and the saddest little sound when we left again. Everyday, Ratchet would pick her up off my lap and try to put her in your arms for a while. Obviously you couldn't hold her, and sadly it never seemed like you noticed at all. But he'd hold onto her lightly to keep her from falling after he'd moved you so that both of your arms wrapped around her little body. And she'd close her optics and stay like that as long as we'd let her, and I always felt just how much she loved you."

"I… never knew about any of that."

"It's all true. And Cybershock is only six days old. These times, these early days, they will disappear quickly from her conscious mind. She'll know you as a carrier like any one else's. But still, on some level she will always recall the love she knew from the start."

Arcee, nodding gratefully and smiling herself by then, finished her morning fuel. The youngling finished the bottle a moment later, leaving not a drop of it in the bottom, but clearly content and not wanting to eat any more either. Knockout held the little one for a moment more while he struggled a little to put the empty bottle back in his side basket and then let her grab at his fingertips while he laughed a little. Then finally he gestured with his optics and a slight motion of his arm, for his mate to take the child from him again.

This time, the tiny bot snuggled against her carrier as soon as she was in her arms again. The little one's optics closed slowly, as she gave in to her need for more recharge. Arcee, smiling as she lifted one tiny hand and let the perfect set of tiny fingers wrap slowly around one of her own, let her love for her child flow through the carrier-creation link shared by their sparks. And the little one smiled a sleepy little baby smile in her near recharge, babbling and murmuring trusting contentment.

"See," Knockout grinned. "She loves you. I told you so."

"How'd you get onto your cart this morning?" Arcee questioned, curious. "I never even heard anyone come in..."

"Ratchet come in to help me," Knockout explained. "We just moved quickly and carefully, trying not to wake you up, which I guess we didn't. I told him I could do things from there by myself, and he was happy enough to let me try..." He looked then in the direction of the wash station and at the now nearly dried little water tracks his tires had made. "I guess I made a bit of a mess..."

"It's only water," Arcee smiled back. In her arms the little one wiggled slightly, and murmured happily once again, as she drifted fully into her recharge.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

When the commlink in her living space indicated an incoming comm call from Jack, Arcee was overjoyed. And she crossed the room quickly to connect the call, before sitting down comfortably in her armchair in the corner. One look at the strange expression on the young humans face though, showing over his webcam as soon as the call had connected, told her something was clearly wrong. Her spark fell a little, but as much as she wanted to, she did not let herself launch right into questioning him about it, in fear that she might only push him away.

"Hey Jack," she said instead, keeping it simple and light, trusting that he might talk when he wanted to, if indeed he wanted to at all. "How's school?"

"School's okay," Jack answered. His voice was hesitant, and he looked around anxiously while his hands on the desk in front of him and just visible in the range of the camera fidgeted far too much. "It's so different being out here. Living on Rhode Island is nothing like Nevada. It rains a lot, and there's often a cold wind off the ocean." Jack continued to fidget, until he lifted a soda can and took a drink from it. "It's almost winter now, and the weather is getting bad. I'll see snow any day now."

"Raf would love that," Arcee commented, with a smile.

And Jack just laughed, a nervous laugh under his breath and looked around the room uncertain again. "Yeah. I sent him a text the other night. He sent back 'no fair.' I got a call from Miko last night… she said Knockout comm'd her on the weekend... said you have your little bot..."

The youngling bot lay in her recharging basket near her carrier's chair in the corner. She was quiet as ever, but fully out of recharge and simply looking around, curious as usual, while she murmured little noises and wiggled slightly in the basket. Arcee nodded at her human friend's words, while she smiled at her child, and watched the tiny bot smile right back.

"Would you like to meet her, Jack?" Arcee asked, smiling again when she saw him nod toward his webcam.

She lifted her youngling from the basket slowly and carefully, and then she sat back down in the armchair again, with the little one laying in her arms happily. After a moment she shifted her a little so that she faced more toward the monitor, and when the little one settled again, murmuring more soft little sounds under slow intakes, Arcee looked back at the monitor. Jack looked back at her, with amazed wonder so clear on his face.

"She's cute," Jack said. "I hard time even imagining what a baby Cybertronian would look like exactly." He smiled a slow and hesitant smile at the youngling, who only blinked and babbled and wiggled to snuggle against her carrier.

"This is CyberShock," Arcee said, gesturing with her optics toward the youngling in her arms

"I can't believe you actually have a baby."

"I almost can't believe it either."

"I never honestly saw you as the baby raising type... you were just too good at scrapping 'cons..."

Arcee laughed a little. Then her expression turned serious and she said, "We want the same things in life that you humans do. Cybertron was not always a world of endless war… I never knew I wanted a youngling though. Never gave it any real thought. Then this one happened, and instantly I knew I loved her more than anything..."

The door to the living space slid open, and Arcee turned to look toward the door, smiling as Knockout drove his cart into their room, with a container of refined energon in his right hand.

"Arcee," he admonished gently, as he rolled up close beside her. "What are you doing up? You're supposed to be resting."

"I am resting," she answered with a laughing smile back. "Okay yes, I'm up. But still I'm resting."

He reached forward as far as he possibly could, in order to set the container down, just barely balanced on the edge of the little end table next to the arm chair. And then he moved again, so that he could use his now free hand to gently turn her head toward him. For a second he carefully studied her optics as he'd done so many times in past couple of days, before he nodded with a smile on his face and gestured toward the container he'd just put down. When she only stared at the container making a face, he picked it up again, careful not to knock it over with his less than perfectly working hand, and shoved it gently into hers.

"Can't I just drink regular energon?" she asked, pretending to whine and pout a little as she made another face.

"Just refined for today. Tomorrow we'll see if you're getting enough energy from regular fuel." Knockout backed himself up close to the recharge station behind him and reached over awkwardly in order to grab the spare covering that had been left in a pile at the end of it, and did his his best, struggling, to pull it over her lower body. "Ratchet wanted you on near medical grade one more day. I convinced him to let me give you refined instead."

Knockout put a finger of his right hand into CyberShock's tiny hand, and smiled at her when she gripped it at once, smiling her crooked baby smile back and babbling a little, while Arcee finished pulling the cover over her legs to make her mate happy.

"Jack is on the comm," she said, uncertain and looking back at the monitor.

Arcee had almost expected disgust and anger on the young human's face. But instead he was looking at his webcam, with a strange look that she could not quite interrupt. Shock? Regret? Both and possibly more? She remembered then that while Miko talked to Knockout over the commlink more than once, the other of their human friends never had. The bot had been near offline in the medical bay at Earth base last time any of them had seem him. Jack, though Arcee had tried to explain it simply once, had no real idea just how things had turned out for him.

"Hello," Knockout said, as boldly as he clearly dared to, while he turned the cart slowly so that he could face toward the monitor across the room. He made a good try at the small wave with his right hand, and sat a second, looking at the human with an uncertain smile on his face-plate.

"H… hello," Jack answered back quickly. And Arcee could see his eyes open slightly wider, as she stared a second in clear disbelief. "You look… uh… better?"

"Yes. Much," Knockout replied, his own uncertainly more than clear. He nodding to the monitor, and smiled just a little. "Thank you."

"You still need to be scanned quickly, but that can wait a bit," he said to his mate, turning back to give her his full attention again. He reached forward and gently took her hand in his. For a second they both just sat silent and smiling at each other, before he added, "I'll be back in a while with a scanner. You two have a nice chat." With that he turned and drove the cart back out of the room again.

"Jack?" Arcee said, when the human continued to sit, staring at his webcam, blinking his eyes slowly with a far away look forming on his face.

"I've… never seen a bot disabled like that before," Jack finally blurted out after several more seconds. "Miko said once it was pretty tragic. You tried to explain it once, but I was too busy just being angry..."

"It is pretty bad," Arcee admitted slowly. She considered her words as she spoke. "I barely give it any real thought. But to really stop and think about how shocking it would be to anyone who just doesn't know… Still, he's come so far this year. If you only knew how bad it was at first… How hard he worked just to relearn to hold his own fuel container, then to hold his seated balance well enough drive that cart without needing to be tightly strapped in. This base is going to be converted into a medical center. The Autobot army will slowly disband, and the planet will a hospital for a growing population more than it will need a military base. Ratchet has already announced that he will happily take the position offered to him, running the place, as chief of medicine and head physician. He's already offered Knockout a job, practicing again in his field the best way he still can, in charge of medical consultations."

"I guess I just didn't really want to believe Miko, when she told me once how he'd obviously loved his job." Jack mused, clearly startled by the fact.

Acree nodded silently, watching as Jack made silly faces over the monitor, at the youngling who watched him curious and smiling. Slowly she spoke again, serious and sadly. "It doesn't matter what side you serve. War is always so hard on the medics. To see their people time and again in medical bays injured... And Knockout is so much younger than Ratchet is. Practicing in the middle of a war was all he knew for most of his life. Still, the passion he had for medical science, the tendancy to just fall right into medibot mode no matter what it was he'd been doing before whatever it was that caused the need for his help, had happened..."

"The two of you really do love each other," Jack observed, clearly only really understanding that for the first time.

Arcee only nodded, and looked at him intently over her monitor, wordlessly urging him to go on, while she held her youngling.

"I..." Jack said, hesitantly, while he looked at her both sadly and seriously. "I… should have trusted you to know what you were talking about, when you tried to explain to me how and why this happened. You were right when you said the war was more complicated then it ever seemed. All I knew was that the 'Bots were good guys and the 'Cons were bad, that we want to scrap the 'cons because they want to scrap you. Maybe it's not always that simple. 'Bee told Raf once he grew up never knowing exactly what it was he was fighting for, only that he had to fight or die. Miko's said that Bulk' once told her much the same thing. It's seeming more and more like so many of you just want to move on and see what a united Cybertron could be. And all I've done when you wished I'd support you, one of my best friends, in a first step toward that dream, is judge and demand justice for a bot who may just have suffered as much as anyone."

"You know I'd forgive you in a spark beat, Jack."

"Thanks, Arcee."

"Hey, you're young. You're impulsive. You're learning..."

"Arcee," Jack said, hesitant again. He began to fidget suddenly with a soda can that was sitting on his desk. "Miko told me Knockout was crying his optics out the night he called her. She said she never knew a bot could beat himself up verbally half as bad he he did over the commlink. You could have died? You almost did? He blamed himself..."

"I could have died," Arcee said honestly. "But I didn't." She smiled for a second at her human friend, and added in a tone of confidant assurance, "It'll take far more than a medical crisis to put this Autobot offline. As for Knockout, Ratchet's told him twice today alone that it wasn't his fault… I think he finally believes him now."

The door across the room slid open again, and Knockout rolled the cart back across the room, toward his mate in her armchair. This time he carried a med scanner in his right hand, and used it to quickly scan her while she stayed sitting where she was. He was obviously happy with her sparkrate and energy level, because he nodded his head slightly and smiled as he shoved the scanner carefully into the little basket mounted to the side of the cart. Still smiling, he reached again with his functional arm for the youngling in his mate's lap.

"My turn," he said, grinning at the little one, as she reached to grab the fingertip he extended to her.

Chuckling, Arcee stood up from the chair carefully, so that she could just as carefully put the youngling on his lap, setting her again his bent left arm in such a way that he could still easily use that hand to drive the cart, while his right hand was kept freed up. Knockout turned to roll away, back toward the door, presumably to carry the baby back to the common room. Because, as Arcee had learned, there were always a few of their teammates who could not wait to gently snatch the baby up from his lap, in order to hold and play with her, every time she was brought out into the base. But instead of going straight back out the door. Knockout paused, and appeared to consider for several seconds, before he turned instead to face toward the monitor.

"Jack, may I speak with you a moment?" he questioned, with obvious uncertainty, as his optics met the eyes of the human on the other end of the commlink.

"Uhh…. Sure." The human had certainly been surprised and startled by the request. But he was not angry either.

"I'm sorry about my behavior toward your mother and that agent of hers," Knockout said, seriously.

When Jack opened his mouth to speak, obviously trying to form a reply, while momentarily unable to make a sound, the bot held up a hand, and instead went on speaking himself. "I was never going to kill either one of them. I never enjoyed killing anybody. I had myself convinced once that that made me so much better than Megatron, or Starscream. And I had myself almost convinced for a while that because I wasn't planing on killing, or even hurting either one of the humans I stuffed in my trunk, that I was simply harassing them mostly for a laugh and a couple of points with the boss, that somehow made it close to being okay."

Knockout looked down a second at the tiny bot on his lap, smiling at her as she smiled at the monitor and the human on the other side of it. Slowly, he spoke again. "I looked out for me once. Wanted what I wanted… or what I thought I wanted. Life was nothing but due credit among a group of bots that promoted the strong and the terrifying, my own pleasure and freedom, and about survival. Then I of any bot, found myself with my own family. And I understand it now… that connection and loyalty between a child and their parent. I think I understand exactly why you would have scrapped a twenty foot Cybertronian, if you could have, just because it was your mother he chose to mess with."

"You were at war," jack answered back, with surprising understanding. "I spent over a year hearing the endless war stories from the Autobot side. I… I can only imagine how things must have been fighting for the 'cons. Serving under some tyrannical warlord that just won't tolerate failure or see reason… Miko told me more than once, you would have died if you'd only shown compassion. I think I should have listened to her, and maybe understand exactly what that meant."

"The war is so close to over… I can learn to be exactly what it is I should have been, even if will likely take a very long time. We're rebuilding more than just a planet. That's the easy part. Just a lot of clean up and construction. Tens of thousands of broken sparks, and bots that never a life filled with anything but fighting and surviving. That sort of rebuilding will take centuries."

"Miko says Soundwave may have defected a while back," Jack said, in a tone somewhere between making a statement and asking a question.

"He did," Arcee said, joining back in the conversation. She wanted to say more. To explain that the newer defector was just another surprisingly broken bot. But she didn't know exactly how to explain all that or even if she should. So instead she just nodded silently for a second, before finally adding with a tiny laugh and hoping to get some point across. "And Soundwave can talk, Jack. Conversation just for the sake of it, is a skill he may not likely ever perfect, but I think he likes trying sometimes."

Everyone fell into silence again, and for a while Jack made funny faces at the youngling, who smiled at him, until her smile finally turned into her first real grin. And Arcee laughed loudly as soon as she saw that, grinning herself, and realizing just how much her child's big and happy grin looked exactly like her creator's.

"It would seem, CyberShock likes you," Knockout said to the human on the other side of the commlink.

"I look forward to meeting her in person, anytime you both bring her to visit Earth," Jack answered. Knockout nodded slowly. But beside him, Arcee smiled in relief at the implication of the human's words.

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Soundwave had been on the blaster range for a good while, fully absorbed in shooting at fast moving targeting lights, when the door, unexpectedly slid open with a rattling creak, and settled to a quick stop with a distinct little thud. Slightly frustrated and anxious over the interruption, and just as guarded as ever the bot stepped backward, closer the door and turned slowly, lowering the targeting blaster he held in his hand. He stepped to his left then, and slammed a hand quickly onto a button on the control board, in order to pause his training session. And he turned around, to look behind him and see who it was that had wandered in, he was surprised to see Ratchet standing in the doorway.

"Are we so busy with repairing a planet, that we can't find a single minute to repair one worn out door in our own base," the old medic mused, chuckling a little under his intakes and gesturing with his optics down toward the track the creaking door slid on. He stepped slowly into the baster range, and cringed a little when the door rattled and creaked again while closing behind him.

"Industrial repairs – not high within my skill set and knowledge base," Soundwave answered, entirely unsure of the medic's reasoning behind his comment, and able only to assume it was an indirect request for him to help with the matter himself.

"Nor mine I'm afraid," Ratchet said, with another little laugh. "Bulkhead will fix it quick when he's got a minute. I'll leave him a note about it in his duty log."

With that the old medic walked the few steps to the shelf at the edge of the room, and picked up one of the targeting blasters, from it's place plugged into a changing port, with a green light on the top to indicate that it was ready for use. Holding the blaster in his hand, he promptly turned to the control board, so that he could program the blaster range's commands. Then he turned to look back to look at Soundwave, and with his optics he gestured vaguely to the blasters that they each held.

"Perhaps you are awaiting a challenger?" the old bot said in obvious invitation.

The bot was certainly not young by any means. And he was a medical officer, seemingly far more suited to a clinic then a targeting range. But Soundwave knew well to not be fooled by either of these circumstances. He may not have been known to have done so much of it in the final decades of the war, but Ratchet could fire a blaster as well as any Autobot. Better in fact then many. Soundwave, for one, had been significantly relieved to find the old Autobot retreating over time from any presence on the battle field, as it gave his side one less significant threat to concern themselves with. It was not the reputation of the old bot though, but instead only his own anxious uncertainty, at utter lack of any grasp on any possible motivation, that made the black and purple bot slowly move to decline the match.

"Ha. What's the matter?" Ratchet taunted, with a loud laugh, as Soundwave stepped slowly backward, meaning to walk close to the wall and return his blaster to it's changing port on the shelf. "You aren't afraid an old bot like me might just beat you…?"

"Challenger – appreciated," Soundwave answered at once. Because even he could not overlook the necessity for action, that that sort of pointed taunting presented.

The targeting program Ratchet had selected, was a simple enough set up of small lighted rings appearing at random, projected onto the walls to the sides and front of them and moving at varied speeds. And the scoring of points was determined by success in shooting directly at the centers of the rings. This was not too difficult a thing to do, in practice. And Soundwave noted to himself that he was rarely missing, even when an increasing number of light targets appeared to move at a far higher speed then he typically used in his own practice sessions. Ratchet, though he was more than good enough to surprise most bots with his level of skill, was missing perhaps fifteen percent of his targets.

"It's been too long since I've done any real training in here," the old medic said, after he had missed again, and this time by a considerable distance.

Soundwave was focused almost entirely on his own targeting and shooting. But he did notice almost in passing, as the old bot shook his head a little, while he tracked a target himself. In the same second the old bot mumbled with a chuckle under his intakes," I like your training style. The both feet on the floor and calmly turning your head and upper body thing… Most of the bots on this base… jumping, spinning, flipping in the air. Arcee is particularly good at that, and thus hard to keep up with. Ha, I mostly just let the young ones have their fun these days."

"Seemingly careless Autobot battle style – surprisingly efficient and dangerous," Soundwave said, as he quickly grew more comfortable in his present social situation. The tone of hs voice remained even and serous. But inwardly he laughed slightly. And at the edge of his vision, he saw the Autobot smile just a little, and heard him laugh again, clearly seeing the intended humor where so many would have missed it entirely.

"I wasn't only looking for a shooting match and a decent opponent when I came in here," Ratchet admitted after the two bots had fired their blasters in silence for a while. He aimed for a fast moving targeting light on a path toward the ceiling, missed it, and chuckled again musing lightly. "Though clearly some good practice can only do me good. And a good match with a skilled opponent can only keep me on my toes as they say." he aimed again, and Soundwave saw him hit the next seven dead on, before he said still casually, "I'd like to have a word with you."

"Inquiry – intended subject of discussion?" Soundwave replied. He wondered if perhaps he ought to be concerned, as he aimed at and hit each of a quick succession of lights.

"Since the restoration of Cybertron, nine ships of it's own citizens have returned home. The population is in the low thousands now. And Primus only knows how many more ships might still be out there, still due to make their way home someday. Already our first new city is booming, even as we continue to build. And there is clear interest from some in moving out to both the east and the west, starting up settlements that will become towns and then cities for their own. We are going to need a real government, long before we imagined such a thing would be all too important."

At the old bot's words, and the implication he saw hidden behind it, Soundwave blinked behind his face-shield. And the reaction he had to it, was almost enough to make him miss his next target.

"Your desire – to recreate the high council?" he questioned pointedly. He voice was even, only because he forced it to be so, just as always. But inwardly a nearly instinctive anger began to surface, and it made him tremble with slightly. He knew full well that the medic had once enjoyed a carreer in the political arena right along side a booming medical practice. "Cybertronian high council – drove the common population into the ground with its corruption."

"I don't disagree with you," Ratchet said. And Soundwave found himself genuinely wanting to believe him. He concentrated some of his attention back on his near perfect aim and reaction time, because that was at the moment the easier thing for his processor to think about. While he went on firing his blaster though, he still actively listened with interest.

"I'm not looking to rebuild anything of the sort. Yes, we need governing leaders. That's a given. No civilized world can run for long without that. And military rule, by the Autobot forces is hardly desirable, or even feasible in the long term. But to have a ruling government again doesn't mean having to let it fall again into corruption and self interest. It will naturally fall to the Autobots as the victors in a war that lasted far too long, to establish a new system of governing the people. And among them all, it seems I'm the one bot most are shouting at to take a strong hand in doing so now. Remember, Soundwave, we once wanted the same things on the most basic of levels. Freedom, equality for the people, an end to the centuries of watching bots suffer and die just for the crime of existing in the lowest castes, or of lacking a function that was understood as useful to the turning of the political wheel..."

Soundwave let one lighted target fly right past him on the wall across the room. And then he missed another and two more, not even trying to fire anymore. Finally he simply lowered his blaster and simply stood where he was, in the middle of the blaster range, just thinking his thoughts. Finally after a long moment or two he asked in genuine curiosity, "Inquiry – your motivation speaking to me about this?"

Ratchet, standing much closer to the control board, hit the red button to end the training session. He looked at the readout on the screen, and nodded toward his opponent, with a quickly muttered, "well, looks like you won that match."

"I only mention the forming of a new ruling council because I hope you would consider serving on it," the old bot continued. The tone of his voice showed that he was entirely serious.

"Choice left to me by former high council policies - serve in fighting pits for their amusement or stave and die in the street. Street – built on near slave labor," Soundwave said, struggling to verbally communicate a great deal of words and several related thoughts at once, while also inwardly fighting back sudden emotions behind the safety of the face-shield. "Ratchet – served on very council I gave everything I could give for dream of overturning. Inquiry – why should you think I would now wish to serve..."

"Something you might already know about me, but you probably don't," Ratchet sighed, leaning against the wall of the blaster range. He shook his head slightly, and stood silent for a moment, obviously choosing his words well. "There was a time, not so long before the war I suppose… I was on, well let's just tell it like it is. I was on a path to self destruction. "I held down a top position at a top hospital, and everyday I turned away sick and damaged bots I knew I could have helped, all because they clearly lower class and could not pay. Everyday I would run off bots holding their deathly sick youngings. Because rules were rules and I dared not break one. After work I'd go off to rub shoulders with Cybertron's chosen elite and those that had been born to be successful. And I'd drink high grade with the rest of the council bots, discuss polices and politics, and smile when I wanted instead to punch someone simply for a functionalism supporting, elitist waste of metal. Id go home every night and I'd let myself get so drunk, that It was morning before I knew Id even fallen in some crumpled heap somewhere on my near my recharge station. And I'd drink a little more before I went to work. Never enough that I couldn't still practice medicine, or at least convince myself and my patents that I could. But certainly enough that turning away all those little babies to die, only bothered me about half as much."

"Inquiry – what happened?" Soundwave questioned. He was unable to help but be curious, and he was certainly shocked and surprised at the information he was learning. "Lifestyle – clearly unsustainable over long term."

Ratchet sighed again, as he moved to plug his blaster back into its charging plug, in it's place on the shelf. He held out a hand to take his opponents from him, and plugged that on too. Then he looked up at him, shaking his head a little.

"You're right, Soundwave," he said, moving toward the door, in order to leave the range, and inviting with a polite hand gesture for the other bot to walk with him. I admitted to the higher ups within the council, that I had a bit of a drinking problem and I knew it. They offered to bury the problem, hide it from the people, from my patients. That answer didn't sit right with me, and eventually I resigned my council seat. I lost my position at the hospital so soon after that, of course I know it was no coincidence."

"Cybertron was a fast changing world back then," Ratchet continue, as the pair walked slowly across the empty training gym. He chuckled a little under his intakes. "You'd remember those days too, even if perhaps from a very different perspective. Orion Pax had recently been named Prime. The first time the Matrix had chosen anyone at all in centuries. The high council was already beginning to slowly crumble when I left, and finally so time after I left, it of course fell entirely. There were whispers in the streets, threatening civil war, but it was still only whispers then. Our new prime was still just a baffled and overwhelmed young bot, was no real grasp on why it had been him of any bot, but still nonetheless determined to make the world a better place. I spoke to him once night of my own wish to help the sick and dying among the truly needy of our city. And seeing my vision at once he ordered the building of fully stocked and equipped clinic meant mostly to serve the needs of the bots in the slims. The job of running it fell to me. One night not long after, I gave up the drinking. Smashed a container of home brew on the sidewalk, promised myself 'no more' and that was it. A century later the whispers of coming war became louder, and soon gunfire was raging through the city. My small clinic was a safe heaven for naturals and kids running from the endless fighting, until one day it was blown away. We were now a world at war, and I was now a field medic. I guess you know the rest. Or at least most of it."

"Request – tell me more about the new council," Soundwave said, with enough hesitation that it was impossible to hide it entirely. And looking at the old medic again, he saw him smile a little at the request.

"Democratic rule. I've seen it work on Earth. It could work on Cybertron too. We set up the first ruling government. We rule for ten years, with a promise to the people, to let them speak, to let them form their own opinion of their leaders and our ways. Then our terms come to an end. We let the common people run for our seats. Cybertron hears each one out, votes for its leaders in a fair and just system. From the energon miner to the clerk and bartender, the scientist to the soldier, all get a vote and a say. We need only to show them first that we are truly all one people, a united Cybertron where all bots hold value. For this to work, the first council needs to be made up of bots of all walks of life and who fought on both sides or the war, as well as many who never fought for either."

"Soundwave – intended to be Decepticon representative?"

The two bots reached the door of the gym, and just as slowly, they wandered out into the empty hallway, turning in now great hurry to walk in the direction of the lift, a ways away up the corridor. And Ratchet nodded slowly. "That was the plan. It's recently become a consideration to ask Shockwave as well. Though I almost imagine he'll be even more hesitant to accept than you. Then there are a number of bots from among the 'cons common troops, with qualities certainly worth considering..."

"Not Knockout," Soundwave questioned, surprised that his teammate's name had not come up in the discussion. In his mind, a council position would be an ideal job for a bot that could do so little when it came to physical work. Besides, he was far from lacking in intelligence, and likely fr more suited to a political career… "Decepticon medic – charismatic. A good talker."

"Knockout is not politician," Ratchet chuckled, with a clearly almost assumed shake of his head. "If this new way is to work, we need far more then simple charisma in our leaders. And Knockout talks almost too much! This base will be overhauled once everyone is moved onto to housing assignments. It's slated to be purposed into new Cybertron's first medical center. A real hospital, eventually capable of treating anything possibly treatable; a place of hope and saving lives. And Knockout is going to help run it with me. He's got some growing up yet to do. Ha, I think we both know that. But if he wants to go in that direction, I can easily see him in the role of chief administrator one day."

"Perdiction – reasonable," said Soundwave, after he'd thought about it a moment. And Ratchet nodded again, before he stopped in the corridor and turned to look at him with a strange, determined look on his face-plate.

"You're a leader," he said. His hands were positioned in front of him, almost as thought he was going to grab Soundwave, by the upper arms in exactly the way one tended to grab another when they wanted to emphasize a point. But his hands stayed there and he never did actually touch him. "You only wanted to live your life, as bot in the background, a loyal and devoted supporter of something bigger than yourself. But still, whenever you took action, bots stepped out of your way, and many paid attention."


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes/ just another 'mini-chapter' again after a few longer ones. I was going to keep on going, but this just looked right as a short little chapter. So fair enough. Something to post as an update while I keep on writing.**

 **A reviewer very recently made a very interesting point about Bulkhead. Maybe too much of a punch first and question later kind of bot, that he really was not meant to be on TFP. Bulk' is a bit tricky to write. I'll work on toning him and the thinking with his fists thing, down a bit in future chapters.**

Drenched from a sudden start of the rainy season, and still dressed in her school clothes, Miko pushed open the door to her family's apartment building. She let a large heavy bag of sticky rice, that she had carried on one shoulder, drop to the floor. And she then processed to dig through her book bag, swinging from her other shoulder, looking for her keys, while she juggled two grocery bags. Somewhere in the bag, her cellphone rang loudly, and she cringed at the high volume she had meant to lower on the train, but had not, and choose now to simply ignore it for lack of any free hands to work with.

"Miko!" someone said from somewhere beyond the building's locked security doors. And a second later, her schoolmate Shinju, who lived a floor below her, yanked open the door to let her inside. Emily, another friend and schoolmate from somewhere three floors above, hurried past Shinju, to grab one of the grocery bags, just as it was about to be dropped.

"Thank you," Miko mumbled politely. She finally managed to find the needed keys, swung the book bag over both of her shoulders and lifted up the bag of rice again.

"We lost you once we all got off the train," Emily said, with a silly and sad pouting look obvious meant with humor. "You didn't wanna walk home with us?"

Emily, an exchange student from somewhere in America, had been speaking to her in fast and excitable English. She still tended to do that both out of habit and because it was obviously much simpler, and required far less effort, whenever she was around English speakers. But Shinju could barely understand a word of it, and Miko, laughing slightly, reminded her friend to try Japanese instead.

"I needed to go to the grocery store," Miko finally said in reply to the original question, and speaking in her own language. She shrugged slightly and gestured with her eyes toward her grocery bags.

"We are on our way to Hayami's house, to go over some ideas for the science competition," Shinju said. "You coming?"

Again Miko gestured with her eyes toward the grocery bags.

"So, we'll drop the groceries off in your apartment and we can go," Emily said. She spoke slowly as she always did when she tried to speak in Japanese, but still she certainly was speaking better than she often said she thought she could.

"Hayami's mother will have leftovers," Shinju put in. "Four people in their house, and she always cooks for seven. She won't mind if you grab some food while we work. Then you get a hot meal too."

"Maybe some other time," Miko answered. She could cook for herself well enough. She'd been doing it since she got home from America to find her mother busier than ever with work and endless socializing into the night. And of course her father working away in Thailand was never anything new. Miko felt a headache coming on, and she longed for a quick hot showing before a fast bowl of rice and vegetables, and a couple hours to do homework in peace before she went to bed.

"You sure, Miko?" Emily asked in her hesitant and cautions Japanese.

"You can always come and meet us at Hayami's if you get lonely and change your mind," Shinju added, after Miko had nodded her certainly about declining the invitation.

"Thanks," Miko answered, as she grabbed the grocery grab that Emily still held for her, and moved to step toward the elevator. As soon as she had grabbed for it though, her phone, still buried in the book bag on her shoulders rang again. Another text message notification. She passed the bag quickly back to her schoolmate, and this time she hurriedly retrieved the phone.

Staring at the message showing on her tiny screen, Miko blinked a couple of times in baffled confusion, looking at a screen filled with Cybertronain code, showing in its usual green again a black background. Her confusion fast gave way to fear and concern, and she stared again before scrolling to the earlier missed messages and finding more had been sent to her in Cybertronian.

"You okay, Miko?" Emily asked. She had fallen back into speaking English again, in her obvious concern for the look she must have seen hon her friend's face.

"I… I'm good, Miko mumbled back a reply, and grabbed the bag again. "I gotta go. Two both have fun."

She was hurrying for the elevator before either of her friends and schoolmates could further react.

Running off the elevator as soon as she had gotten tot he ninth floor, Miko hurried to her family's empty apartment, discarded the bags of food onto the tiled floor of the tiny kitchen, and raced immediately for the little living room beyond that, where she knew she had last left her lap top. After turning it on, and while she let it boot up, she grabbed her cellphone again and typed in a hurried text message.

 _Get online NOW. Message me. Emergency._

A reply took a little while, but she expected it would. And as she waiting, staring expectantly at her laptop screen, the phone rang again. She grabbed it and stared for a second with a sinking heart, at another message in code she could not read. Eventually her computer chimed, indicating an incoming call through her messenger service and she hurried activated her webcam, she she clicked to accept the call.

"Miko," Raf said somewhere on the other end of the line. The view on Miko's screen showed that he was in his room, in front of a bookshelf overstuffed with textbooks, the unstable shaking meant he was surely trying to balance his own laptop, somewhere, while he moved to put it down somewhere stable. "It's four in the morning over here. What the scrap..."

"I know, I know," Miko mumbled in apology. "But I need your help. You're the only person I know of on Earth, who can read Cybertronian!"

"What?" Raf only sounded baffled, and his looked at her, confused, over his webcam. Slowly through he confusion gave way to obvious concern of his own, as he mumbled, "Miko, the bots always message us in English..."

"Why do you think I was so baffled I urgently called you, when I found texts from someone today in Cybertronain," Miko answered quickly. She held her phone up to her cam, to let him have a look at the text on its screen. "Raf, please tell me you can read this, and work out who it's actually from."

"Hmm..." Raf appeared to considered for a moment. "Okay. Can you send me still images of your phone screen? I think I need to copy that out onto paper so I can figure it out."

"Gimme a few minutes," he said after Miko had sent the requested images, taken by holding her phone close to the webcam.

"Maybe these are from Bumblebee," Miko reasoned while Raf worked at his desk, writing on paper beside the corner he'd used to set down his computer. "Maybe he was trying to message you in his language because he knew you'd read it and laugh, and he sent it all to the wrong number by accident."

The simple explanation was the only think she could think of, and it sounded reasonable to hope it was only a simple mistake they would all later laugh about. She wanted to think that perhaps her growing panic over it was silly, that she had bothered him before the crack of dawn over nothing. But something about the whole thing just felt wrong, and now, alone in her family apartment she glanced around, nervous and not sure why.

"Any luck?" she asked, looking at her webcam. She kept her voice even and smiled a little to hide the strange growing feeling of anxiety.

"Miko," Raf said, suddenly looking up from his work with an expression of unmistakable fear on his face. He made eye contact with her over their computers. "Grab what you need, fast. I think you've gotta run."

"What? Run? Run where? Raf, who was that? What do these messages say?"

"I'm going to call 'Bee. He can talk to the rest of the bots. Someone will know what to do. They've always said they're only a space bridge away. That's got to mean someone can come and help you… Miko run. Get away from your building."

"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what the frag is going on!"

"It appears those text messages were sent somehow, by Starscream," Raf hurriedly explained. "I would guess he was taunting you with those messages. He wouldn't know any of us could translate them…. Or maybe he would. I...I don't know. He claims to have your address and an operational space bridge. Miko, I don't know what he could possibly want with you of any of us, but let's not find out..."

"Scrap," Miko said loudly. And it was then that she finally moved to run.

Racing quickly down the hall, she dashed into her bedroom, dumped the contents of her book bag into a careless heap on the floor, and stuffed in the first warm sweater she could grab from a hanger inside the closest. Running back through the place, she grabbed a family picture – taken three years before, from it's place in a frame on a bookshelf, a decent handful of snack food from the kitchen, her school ID, and her laptop and phone.

The hallway was empty when she stepped out of the apartment with her full bag. And she made a quick dash for the elevator several doors away. Riding back to the ground floor, she left the elevator again as soon as its doors reopened, and made a dead run for the main security doors, and out into the street. She managed to run half a block, through the crowd on the sidewalk that never seemed to really thin out all that much, and she might have just kept on running, if not for one loud bang somewhere behind her, which made her turn at once and look.

A space bridge had opened, in the middle of the air, somewhere close to the roof of her apartment building. And clearly its operators had no regard whatsoever, for who might just have noticed such a big and bright out of place and obvious thing right over central Tokyo. Miko took a few more running steps, in a direction leading away form her building, and the bridge. But then she turned again to look back. And when she did, she saw many lighted windows, of apartments belonging to hundreds of her neighbors she did not even know. Looking again, her eyes fell on a window she knew belonged to Shinju's family. Her friend was not home – it was safe to assume she was still away with Emily- but someone certainly was, and that family had always been nothing but kind and helpful to anyone that needed a thing from them. Right next to Shinju's place, a window slid open, and an elderly lady, who Miko had seen more then once in passing in the halls, and now oblivious to the threat above, leaned slightly out over her sill to water a hanging basket of flowers.

With a shake of her head, Miko paused on the sidewalk, and grabbed the cellphone from her bag. Then she turned and ran back toward home, while typing in a text message, and finally sending it.

 _Heading for the Rooftop, Raf. Building is full of people, and no one deserves to be trashed by 'cons. Give the bots my coordinates._

She was well aware that Raf would surely text her right back, begging her in quickly typed words not to go back, to stay away from the bridge. She knew that when that failed he would contact Jack and within a few minutes more he would text, begging for the same. And if she'd only had more time she might have answered back, telling them both that wreckers did not just run away. But there was no time. Instead, Miko turned her phone off and ran back anyway.

Riding back up in the elevator, and running fast through the building besides, Miko reached the rooftop in record time. And when she stepped out though the trap door above the twenty-second floor, she sighed with relief at finding the rooftop empty of neighbors. Turning around at once, she faced the blueish space bridge portal, spinning in the air meters above and away from the rooftop's edge. Glancing around fast, she grabbed a meter long iron bar, likely discarded from some nearby construction project, and wielding it threateningly, she turned again to face the portal. The wait was not a long one. And within minutes she heard the roar of jet engines from somewhere within the swirling of the bridge.

"I know it's you, Starscream," Miko called into the spinning vortex, and waved the bar around a bit to make her point. "I'm ready for you!"

She had forgotten just how impossibly fast the 'con commander was in in the air. And she had forgotten that he handled a flying form far better than most bots she knew handled any ground based ones. But still, when Starscream raced out of the bridge, made two rapid loops over and away from the roof to lose some speed, and then flipped midair to drop to the roof on his feet in his bot form, she was ready with the heavy bar in both her hands.

"It is Lord Starscream now," the bot screamed at her, she she stood in front of him and stared up at his knees. He was repainted, she noted oddly enough. A fair of bit white and blue, and a bit of red along with his familiar dull silver gray now. But still he was very familiar and inwardly she cringed and shuddered, while she gripped the bar with determination.

"Only to your loyal subjects," Miko said, taunting him dangerously. "Of course most of those are already defecting..."

"Shut up, you… human!"

"That the best you got?"

"I said, shut up."

Miko, feeling bolder than she probably should have, and determined to hide amount of fear she did feel behind even greater boldness, stomped toward the bot that towered over her, and whacked him as hard as she could across the fronts of his legs with the bar in her hands. It might have done nothing more than produce a loud metallic clang, but still it made her feel powerful and she did enjoy making noise. She looked up to see the bot look down, and for a moment he only looked at her open mouthed with shocked surprise. And then he reached down fast, and before she could react he lifted her from the ground, and held her high above the rooftop, with one of his long pointed metal fingers hooked securely, under her thankfully equally secured book bag.

"Put me down, you flying nitwit!" Miko yelled. And though she knew full well that it would get her nowhere, she waved the bar around trying to hit him with it again. Finally she settled on a good hard thud across the top of his left wrist, trying to force him to drop her. When that failed, as she knew it almost certainly would, she tried it again anyway, hitting him several times in rapid succession. He only appeared to look almost bored with the whole thing, she was doing little more than leaving dents barely bad enough to be noticeable, and he was certainly not letting go of her.

"What?" she taunted, still held high up in the air above the roof, and glancing toward the space bridge portal. "No backup?"

"I hardly think I need any 'back up' to secure one obnoxious little human," Starscream snapped at once. He gave the human he held such a terrible and furious look, that she was stunned into silence at once. And when he lifted her slightly higher, shaking her just slightly, the bar fell from her hands and clattered to the roof top far below.

"What are you gonna do? Drop me off the roof?" Miko asked, finding her voice to taught the bot again with far more boldness than she felt, when he began to walk slowly toward the edge. But for all her bold taunting, and the pointed laugh that went along with it, she feared more with each slow step that that was exactly what he was going to do.

"Fly willing back to this terrible planet of yours just to kill you? Waste of my time!" Starscream laughed loudly for a long moment, in a clearly unstable and crazy way that Miko had never heard from a bot before. "Say, Miko… you aren't afraid of flying are you. I wouldn't want to deal with any mid air panic attacks on the way back to Cybertron."

"Cybertron? Ah no! I haven't packed nearly enough stuff to leave the planet on a minute's notice. You pulled this, grab the kids and haul us to your planet trick before, and what happened? The Autobots saved us, and you lost!"

Starscream, seemingly oblivious to the tiny human's yelling, took a couple more huge steps toward the roof's edge. And from there he simply jumped overt and a way from the edge, transforming as he did and trapping her inside his jet form. Miko, now inside, unharmed, but with no hope of safely escaping in mid air, kicked angrily at the sides of the small cramped cockpit, while he only laughed again somewhat maniacally. Pausing to look a second through the tiny window she was trying hopelessly to kick at, she could see the space bridge portal swirling all around her as they left Japan and Earth behind.

"Stand by to close the bridge on my order, "Starscream said out loud to someone, who was obviously waiting somewhere unseen.

"What the frag do you want with me, you… you crazy flying junk pile?" Miko demanded once she had grown tired of her helpless kicking.

"Bait," Starscream answered at once. He laughed again, and though his face-plate was hidden in his jet mode, she could easily imagine he was probably somewhere between snarling and smirking at her. "Defector bait."


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes/ Finally, a chapter with a bit more real excitement in it. And this is one that I've been wanting to write since I started the story. Everything is leading now toward a direction I always planned on making it go.**

 **Slight warning again, just in case… this time for references to assault.**

The common room of the Autobot base was fast approaching a state of near chaos. Several bots talked at once, in a mess of competing conversations, and a flurry of fast yelled opinions and voiced thoughts. Arcee, in the strange situation of stepping fully into her commanding officer role, for the first time with a youngling in her arms, tried for a few moments to listen to everyone at once. Finally, she shifted Cybershock to rest on one bent arm and tried her best to balance her that way, while she waved a hand in the air, motioning for her team to quiet down.

"Raf," she said, looking in the direction of the monitor behind the comm station, and at the young human who waited on the commlink, trying hard to get in a word of his own amid the flurry of Autobots. "You have the floor. What happened to Miko?"

"I… I dunno..." the human said. Clearly, he was close to panic, and Arcee smiled, nodding slightly, urging him to go on. "I told her to get out. But she texted back that she was heading for the roof of her building instead. She… she stopped answering then. Her phone might be off. Now I don't know where she is..."

"That'd be Miko," Bulkhead mumbled, shaking his head helplessly in the corner. "Ya tell her to run away from one of the most dangerous bots left on Cybertron, and decides shes runnin' for the roof instead to get the best view of the action."

"She.. she said something about her neighbors not deserving to be trashed by 'cons," Raf said, hesitantly. For a fleeting second the look on his face staring at his webcam somewhere on Earth was almost hopeful. "Maybe that's some help…?|

"Fragging crazy kid," Wheeljack mumbled from his place, standing close to Bulkhead. He shook his head just as much as any others already were. "She went to the roof to take on Starscream by herself."

"You can't possibly think even Miko would do that," Arcee said, turning to him, with a face-plate filled with dread.

"It's Miko," Wheeljack answered, and somehow that clearly said it all. "Kid's never run from a fight yet." He paused for a moment and stood silent and shaking his head, and then mumbled with obvious regret, "on some level I wanna think I should be proud to think our tiny little wrecker would at least dare to try… on the other hand though, yeah I know it's stupid and careless. She could well be in a lot of trouble..."

"Fragging right she could be in trouble," Bulk' said, speaking loudly now. He slammed a huge green fist down hard onto the worktable that happened to be next to where he stood. "With Starscream, it's almost a given that she's in trouble. And here we are, all standing around and talking when we should be doing something to save her!"

"None of us have any idea where Miko is yet," said Knockout, who had rolled slowly up beside him on his cart. He looked up at the big green bot sadly. "We all want to do something, but we need to find her first."

Bulkhead nodded his silent understanding. But not a second later, he responded to it instead by kicking the table he had just punched, clear across the room with one large and powerful foot. It landed, broken, close the monitoring station and Arcee's feet. And she only gave Bulk' a look of understanding from back across the room.

"Soundwave – sorry… regretful," Soundwave mumbled, quiet as usual. He stood alone in the far corner of the room, opposite the one occupied by the wreckers. Laserbeak sat perched on his arm, and clearly, she was paying attention to everything because she turned her head to look at whoever it was that was speaking at a given point.

"For what?" Arcee questioned the newest defector. But instead of looking back at him, she looked at the monitor in front of her.

"Starscream – once ordered me to retrieve information for him. The address and common locations of the human in question. Plan – clearly under consideration. I did nothing to stop him. Order – quickly followed."

"Soundwave, you were still with the 'cons then," said Speedbreaker, speaking in a tone of hesitant understanding, as she stood next to Bumblebee in the center of the room.

"Fault and blame – still partly mine," Soundwave answered. And more than one Autobot paused a second in whatever it was they were doing or may have been about to say, genuinely shocked by how much Soundwave appeared to truly care about the fate of their human friend.

"Soundwave," Ratchet spoke up from a place on Speedy's other side," man the computer for a while," he gestured with one hand toward the controls and the comm set up. "if anybot can possibly hack into a 'con bridge log and find the location of Starscreams's space bridge..."

The black and purple recent defector only nodded one in agreed understanding and walked fast across the room to take over the controls. Smokescreen, currently struggling with exactly that, hurriedly jumped up from his seat and hurried backwards to let him take over. Without wasting a second, Soundwave began typing on the keyboard, staring at the screen in front of him while he pulled up seemingly endless streams of information.

"We need to call Jack," Bumblebee said, breaking the silence that for a long moment had been filled only by Soundwave's rapid keystrokes. He looked around at his teammates, with determination clear in his optics, right along with his sadness over the whole mess. "He has the right to know what's happened. Miko is his friend."

"You're right 'Bee," Arcee answered quickly. Inwardly she cursed herself for the oversight. And she was about to tell him to get on that right away, when Raf, still following everything via his computer and the commlink, shook his head quickly.

"I've already talked to Jack," the young human explained. I've been sending him messages online while I've been talking to you guys. I only need to add him to the call on my end…"

"Please tell me someone's got a plan," Jack said, the moment Raf had added him into the call, as he said he would.

"We're working on it, Jack," Arcee assured him quickly. She looked at the monitor, with a smile on her face. But she knew all the while that her human charge would only see right through it in seconds.

"Is Starscream going to come after me and Jack too?" Raf questioned. He looked at his webcam with wide open, and nervous eyes.

"In all truth, we still have no real idea," Arcee admitted. "Both of you, stay inside your homes and don't either one of you dare cut this call off yet. If anything happens to you, I swear to Primus…."

"Space bridge – location identified and plotted." said Soundwave from his place at the computer.

* * *

When Starscream transformed again, back into his bot form, Miko once again found herself held hanging in the air by his metal fingertip, under the straps of her book bag. From her vantage point, a few meters in the air, she looked around as much as dared without moving enough to risk being dangerously dropped.

He had brought her to a place of jagged reddish and yellow rocky ground that dropped off abruptly into dangerous high cliffs a ways from where he stood holding her. She could hear a sound like that of rushing water, and she looked down the best she could over and away from the cliffs edges, to see a river flowing far below, cutting its way through low walls of shinning blue, pink and silver. And to her shock and dismay it was not a river of clear flowing water she saw, but instead a kind of think dark grayish oil, that boiled, hot and bubbling, churning under a layer of steam that rose from the surface. The air around her was thick and humid, and it smelled of chemicals and rust. But it was breathable to humans as she learned in seconds, and she knew in that regard at least she was safe.

Two identical, and more than likely nameless troopers were waiting near the cliff's edge for Starscream's return. And they continued to stand, as though awaiting orders in their places conversing in hushed tones in a language that was presumably Cybertronain. Both turned more than once to stare at Miko, through the dark covers that hid most their faces. And she stared right back, until one, then the other looked away from her again.

"You may as well put me down," Miko said. And When Starscream snarled at her in warning, she only shrugged dramatically. "Come on. This is Cybertron, and we're in the middle of nowhere. Where exactly am I going to go if I run away?"

The 'con continued to hold her, and for a moment she worried that it would be the eventual slipping of her book bag's straps that would send her to the ground and dangerously at that. But finally, Starscream made what appeared to be a nearly too casual shrugging motion, and unexpectedly he bent a little before flinging her to the ground from a couple meters up. Miko rolled backward, landing hard and struggling to quickly break a fall. And when she'd stopped rolling and caught back the breath that had been knocked out of her, she sat up on the rough metallic ground, before finally stumbling to her feet.

Miko wandered slowly off toward the edge of the cliffs, and behind her Starscream only stood where he was, seeming not concerned in the least with letting her wander. She crept to the edge and dropped to her knees, where she peered over as far as she could, hands gripping the rocky edge of the cliff. She looked down over the deadly drop impossibly high up, and down at the boiling and churning river of oil below. The valley it cut its way through was narrow, and high jagged rocks rose up on both sides, away from a steaming cloud meters above the river. And though she had been considering it carefully when she went to look, she knew now that the cliffs and the river were by no means a safe bet when it came to any possible escape.

"Question," she said, turning back the bot, and daring to walk close to him again instead of away. She stood still, just far enough away that he could look at her comfortably if he were to look down, which he did. And she rocked back and forth a little on her heels, letting her curious look show on her face. "The first time brought me here, with my friends, we required sealed containers to save us from insta-kill in the open air of your planet. So, how come I'm fine out on the open air now?"

"I don't need to answer the questions of a ridiculous, disgusting human being," Starscream snapped at once. He red optics blazed with his frustration.

"Not gonna hurt anything to explain it though," Miko reasoned quickly. She continued to rock on her heels and went on looking up at him. "It's just a simple science question. You'd know the answer to something so simple in a second. They say the sciences were your passion once before you were ever a commander for the 'cons."

"The atmosphere of the planet was ruined eventually along with the rest of it. When the Autobots restored the place using Cyber-matter, everything was restored, including the atmosphere. There's no reason an organic life-form should not be able to breathe our air, at least on a short-term basis." Starscream paused then and looked at her with suspicion written all over his face-plate. His optics flashed furry, as he demanded, 'they? Who is 'they'?"

"Who do you think?" Miko shrugged in an over the top exaggerated motion, and continued to calmly look up at him. "The Autobots! Well, Ratchet mostly. He said you would have been brilliant if you'd only gotten your fair chance. He said you build most of the early technology the 'cons had back at the start of the war..."

"Shut up, you..." Starscream suddenly shrieked in rage. But he didn't bother to finish insulting her again.

"Or what?" Miko snapped back, boldly. She glared at him with contempt and only hoped her look was just fearless enough. "You'll kill me? Get mad enough to crush me like a scraplet? I know you won't! You said already I'm bait. I don't know what that means yet exactly, but I do know that surely that only really work if I'm alive."

"Shut up!"

"What _do_ you mean by defector bait anyway? Do the 'bots know I'm here yet? They'll need to find out sooner or later? Who taught you to fly anyway? I gotta admit, I always thought your skills were pretty impressive..."

"Do you ever shut up?"

"Not as often as anyone might like," Miko answered, still boldly. She knew she was beyond pushing her luck, but she reasoned quickly that that had never exactly stopped her before. She let the fearless and glaring look fade away from her face and looked up at him almost smiling. "He really did say all that, you know. Ratchet I mean. I guess he's old enough to remember everyone that became Autobots and 'cons before anyone was really either, and you were all just Cybertronians. I don't think Ratchet ever really knew I was paying attention when he told the boys and the younger bots those old stories of his, but I was. He told us once that he never knew you very well, but it used to make him angry to see a young bot with potential beaten down until there was nothing left of what he used to be.."

"I suppose the entire Auotbot army knows now," Starscream said. Strangely he looked away from her and stopped his furious glaring at once as he did so. And though he was not shouting, but mumbling quietly instead, his anger was more than clear. "I suppose everyone laughs about how ridiculous that I of all bots could so easily become Megatron's personal punching bag, the bot to drag away to beat on to the point of near off-lining when we lost another battle." The bot stared furiously out over the cliffs, and appeared all but oblivious to the look of utter and complete shock and sadness on the tiny human's face. "I suppose along with the rest of them, you think I must, somehow, have deserved it."

Miko, still standing near his feet, shook her head slightly to shake off the sudden shock that had rendered her all but speechless. She had not know exactly it was she'd been expecting from her flurried try at conversation with the 'con leader. Mostly she had been distracting him or trying to, long enough that the bots may have formed a plan of their own. That and perhaps she was only careless and bored and conserving with him of any bot simply to see if she could. But whatever it was that she'd been trying for exactly, this was not it. Slowly, cautiously, Miko crept just slightly closer to his left foot.

"Hey, Starscream," she called to him, looking up as high as she could, trying to meet his optics. Slowly he looked back down at her again, scowling and furious. And she took one more tiny step closer. "No one ever deserves it."

* * *

"Space bridge – last exit point. Cybertron. Sector seven North, thirteen East. Zone fifty-six," Soundwave said speaking slow and cautious as ever.

And all around him, bots launched again into a fury of competing conversations, among their audible gasps of horrified shock.

"One at a time," Arcee commanded, holding up her free hand again. She still held Cybershock with her other arm, but after another moment of trying, somewhat clumsily to juggle her while working, she plopped the baby down gently onto Knockout's lap the second he rolled closer to her and stopped.

"That location," Bumblebee mumbled, looking up from a datapad containing a map that he's grabbed quickly and began to read over fast. "It's clear on the other side of the planet."

"Should be very close to the Steaming River," Ratchet added, thinking as he read the map over his young teammate's shoulder panel. He looked up for a second, puzzled. "What the frag would Starscream want with that place?"

"That would technically be in Autobot territory," 'Bee mumbled. He studied the map closer and shook his head, helpless.

"Fourteen meters deep section of a river of superheated oil hot enough to boil an organic creature's skin off in seconds," Smokescreen said, from his place on a bench near the far wall of the room. "Sheer walled cliffs seven hundred meters high. Jagged ground, probably covered in metal shards sharp enough to cut a human to shreds. Sideswipe and I used to go out there mostly just to goof off and make our own band of trouble. But to one small human with no maps or gear an and no idea how to get to safety… I hate to say it, guys, but I think he's brought her to one place she'll never get out of alive."

"You don't know Miko," Bulkhead declared, as he took a couple of fast and determined steps toward his teammate. "Not like I do. You've never seen half the things she's done when anybot would have said she'll never make it. Scrap. She's saved bots' tail pipes more than once and we make her look tiny. Miko's a wrecker. She's not scared of anything, and the fact that she's a human among a bunch of big bots never stopped her from scrapping a few 'cons of her own, for her own Autobot battle record."

"We're launching a rescue," Arcee said. She began to pace the room from one side to the other and back again, with her optics glaring forward with determination. "We all know there was never any question there. "We offline Starscream if we have to. Primus knows that'd settle the last thing between us and a true end to the war. A rescue and very possible takedown, is possible now that we have a location. And Bulk is right. If any little human can survive, Miko can." She paused in her pacing and looked for a second toward the monitor, smiling a little at Raf and Jack, who sat in their homes still following along via their webcams. "Any one of those three young humans could."

Arcee began to pace again a second later, pausing again for only a second, driven by a carrier's instinct to check up on her child, who she instantly saw laying in her mate's lap, grinning innocently oblivious to tension and worry about her. Cybershock stuffed the tiny fingers of a little silver hand into her mouth and sucked on them gently, babbling a little under her intakes while Knockout held her strangely tighter than usual with his right arm and whispered incoherently to her at the back of the room.

"I just wish I had a clue how to go about this exactly," Arcee mumbled almost under her intakes and referring again to the rescue mission. She looked over the group of bots she had never asked to look to her for leadership scattered around the common room, and all of them clearly looking to her for a plan.

"What the frag are we waiting for?" Wheeljack demanded. He held his body stiff with and looked around the room, with optics set in determination. "Let's go kill us some 'con scum and get that kid back here."

Standing close by, Bulkhead slammed his two huge fists together. And the two bots exchanged looks of agreement with not a word about it.

"Looks like the wreckers are rearing to go," Arcee said, a decision made at once. And she looked around the common room quickly, issuing fast and rapid fire orders, designing a plan as she went. "Fine with me. Bulk', Wheeljack, I'll roll out with the two of you. Soundwave, I need you on comms and the ground bridge. We'll require additional heavy weapons, so you'll bridge us away from the weapons locker instead of the common room. Ratchet, ready the medbay, just in case. Let's hope as always that no one needs you later. Bumblebee, Smokescreen; Soundwave will bridge each of you to Earth to retrieve Jack and Raf. We don't know what 'Scream might do if he manages to run for it. He's easily grabbed one kid. Let's not let him grab the others as a backup. Knockout, give me the baby for a second. I need to tell her I'll see her again tonight before we put her to bed..."

"Waoh! We get to come to Cybertron?" Raf questioned over the monitor. Despite the seriousness of the situation and the unexpectedness of it all, there was no denying the kid's excitement over the news.

"You might well be safer here than on Earth for the moment," Arcee explained quickly, only glancing at the children over the monitor, while she held her own child. She wiped furiously at a coolant tear that had formed in the corner of her right optic, before anyone could possibly have noticed, and stood, determined to hold the baby just a second more.

Ratchet had been standing in the center of the room, reading over the map with 'Bee. But at that moment he stepped away from the young bot, and stomped across the room toward Arcee in a few no-nonsense, long strides. He stopped in front of her, and grabbed her shoulder panels gently, while she held her baby.

"It's a good solid plan," he said, looking around the room at each of his teammates before his optics settled finally on the pair of wreckers. "Except that Arcee will not be joining you."

"Ratchet… I need to..." Arcee began to protest at once. She stepped back, easily away from his light grip on her. She looked up at him, with a look of seriousness in her optics. But the old medic only shook his head, adamant.

"Stay behind," he said and smiled just a little. "Doctor's orders."

"Ratchet!" Arcee said immediately. She could feel her frustration building and in her typical stubbornness, she only stared him down while she flung a fluffy of words at him. The hand not needed to hold the baby gestured stiffly in his direction. "Cybershock is two months old. You can't possibly think I still belong on medical exemption. That's ridiculous. I've got a got a member of team Prime, a tiny human being no less, out in the middle of nowhere, with Starscream, who needs to be taken down at once. You can't tell me I'm not going..."

"Uh uh uh," Ratchet said right back, with a waving and gesturing hand of his own. But just as quickly, that waving hand of his stopped waving and instead he gently took hold her her arm, before the other hand reached to tip her chin up and make her look at him. "I can and I will – Not for health reasons. You're right. It's been more than long enough and you're fighting fit – but for reasons of emotional health instead." The old bot looked down at the youngling resting in her carrier's careful hold and smiling innocently while she babbled a little. "You don't want to leave her, and I fragging well know it. And doing so would not be good for either one of you. So don't. Someone else will go with the wreckers. I suggest sending Smokescreen. I'll go myself to collect Jack."

Arcee nodded, hesitantly and feeling half useless when she knew she shouldn't have. But relief flooded her spark and she smiled a little at the old bot still nodding just slightly in agreement before she turned back to the group.

"Smokescreen," she said, looking right at him across the room. "You feel like rolling with the wreckers?"

The blue and yellow bot jumped to full attention at once, and grinned a big grin instantly before he copied Bulkhead's motion of slamming his fists together.

"Let's roll," he said.

"Arcee," said Knockout, suddenly hesitant, as he rolled up beside her slowly in the middle of her in the midst of her rapid planning and ten thoughts at once. He reached up to grab her gently by the hand with his functional right one and smiled a little. "Cybershock will surely need a bottle soon. I have no spare one for her. I'll… be right back..."

* * *

"Listen to me, you pathetic flesh bag," Starscream yelled, while he snarled wickedly. He plucked Miko right up from the ground in one single motion, and immediately he stood fully upright again, holding her suspended and swinging by only her right foot, high over the jagged metal ground of Cybertron. He maneuvered, slow and deliberately, adjusting the position of his hand and arm, so that she hung, helpless at optic level with him. And he glared at her, red optics burning with hate and rage and any other horrible emotion she could name. "I'll never be another Cybertronain you can relate to and befriend. I don't need your understanding. I don't want your help. Those Autobots are most certainly tracking us by now. They'll work out exactly what it is I want and they'll come through a ground bridge and try to play the heros. And when they do, I'll destroy every one of them, plus your defector friend Knockout. Then I'll discard you right into the steaming river, to boil alive in under five seconds. And finally, I will rule this planet. Any further questions or ridiculous comments, based on your own worthless personal opinion?"

Hanging upside down, Miko shook her head, and turned, again as much as she dared, so that she could take another look around her. The jagged ground, she saw from so high up, went on for what must have been endless miles. But it also dropped slightly, slopping down gradually to the North. And far away, a fair ways down the gentle slope, there was a road. It was hardly much of a road at all. Just a ruined wide path that cut across the landscape, and filled with cracks and tiny creators, showing its lack of any maintenance for centuries. But still it was a road, and all roads, she reasoned, surely had to lead to somewhere eventually. The road dropped off on one end, right over the steaming river, dead-ending at the cliff tops. But in the other direction, it appeared to stretch onto into endlessness,, quickly turning to follow some cliffs to its left. And those, much lower cliffs, were bumpy and textured and contained endless hand and foot holds, and also housed small caves. Narrow crevices wound their way through as well. And Miko, looking it over, wondered for the first time in a while, if perhaps eventually, when the time was right, it might just pay to run for it after all. Assuming, of course, the bot would once again put her down.

"You listen to me," Miko said, feeling bold again, and though she was hanging upside down, held by a few of his fingertips, she pointed her finger at him angrily, and glared. "I'm sorry your world went to war. I'm sorry that any brilliant future you could have had was derailed, and that your boss, the bot you clearly had to have admired just as much as you hated and resented, beat you half to death in his own anger. You saw good bots. As high command, you sent many to their deaths. Yeah, I get that. But your entire planet suffered. Not just you. Half the bots on Cybertron live with broken sparks and nightmares. They all feel guilt for a million things they could have done differently, and live with endless 'what ifs.' And they're all picking up the pieces, rebuilding and learning from the past. All while you just go on and on about vengeance, just as though someone owes you something."

"Shut up, you human waste of space!" Starscream hollered in reply. Miko knew he would, and she only dared to continue glaring at him.

"No," she said, fully aware that talking back to a twenty-foot bot who was clearly moving toward homicidal, was not exactly a wise idea. "You're going to kill me soon anyway. Before I die, I think I've got the right to say my piece. Knockout is damaged and disabled. His processor failed, and it sounds like he never quite got better. I don't think that's any big secret. You must know already. And still among the Autobots he's successful and finally happy. He's got a decent life for the kind of bot you would have ordered scraped as garbage. And Soundwave. He served under Megatron for centuries. Gave every scrap of energy he had to serve the cause and he might just have served you as leader too before you tried to kill him. I don't agree with your cause. I support the 'Bots. But at least Soundwave knew who he was and he gave up his future for something he truly believed in. At least both of those bots are capable of moving on and starting over."

She wiggled and shifted in his grip, not entirely unconvinced that a drop from the high he held her, would be worth the risks if it meant a chance of landing well and running for the road. But he held her tightly and showed no sign at all, of dropping her. While she shifted her body with far greater determination, Miko looked in the direction of the two still and silent troopers at the cliff's edge. She had nearly all but forgotten about them in their silence, and suddenly she waved a hand, gesturing in their direction.

"Do those guys ever move or think these days without orders? Or have you fully succeeded in beating them both into complete submission and loyalty too?" she demanded, further pushing her luck and knowing it. But she wanted to know if she could get a reaction from the troopers themselves, and tried hard as she could to guess at tiniest hint of emotion their hidden faces.

Neither trooper said a thing, but one of them, the one standing on the right, turned his head just enough that he could look at her quickly before he turned back again. Miko, to her shock, saw the slightest hint of a nod of his head as he did so. Starscream, had not seen any of that. He'd been too busy huffing and snarly, while he stared at the ground. But Unexpected his huffing anger gave way to an incoherent and mostly likely wordless, growl.

* * *

"What the frag are you doing down here," Bulkhead heard Wheeljack exclaim in more than obvious bewilderment as soon as the white bot had walked into the weapons locker on the base's lower level.

Bulk', hurried at that second, into the small room himself with Smokescreen right behind him. And all three bots exchanged quick, hurried glances with one another, while at the same time looking baffled, at Knockout, who sat parked on his cart close as he could get to the far back wall of the room. The red bot only shrugged his odd variation of something clearly intended to be a shrugging motion, and he rolled himself forward slightly to meet the other three.

"Like Jackie said, what the frag are you doing down here?" Bulkhead questioned. He chuckled a little as he grabbed his preferred large semiautomatic rapid fire blaster from its place on the far wall, and reaching over Knockout's head to grab it quickly. But inwardly his spark dropped a little inside his large frame. He knew at once that whatever it was that the red bot's answer could possibly be, he wouldn't possibly like it.

"I'm going with you," Knockout said quickly. The tone of his voice and look on his face-plate said that he clearly meant it too.

"What?" Smokescreen exclaimed. He grabbed his own weapon, locked the safety and slung the blaster over his shoulder by its strap.

"Miko is my friend too," Knockout answered, as though that was meant to clearly explain everything away. "She was the first one on this team that truly called me her friend. How can I not at least try..."

"You have no integrated weapons. You can't fire a blaster, or even lift one. Your cart can't keep up. You can't transform." Smokescreen went immediately into a rant, arms waving for emphasis and not a care in that moment about offending anyone by telling things exactly how he saw them. "Listen. We like you and all. You've proven yourself long before now. No one's asking you to go playing the hero on some suicide mission, for us to call you an Autobot. We have work to do, and we need to do it now. We have no time, or room on a rescue mission, for a damaged bot that's unable to walk."

"Starscream grabbed Miko to get a hold of me," Knockout said right back after he'd sat a second on the cart, silent and looking almost entirely shocked at Smokescreen's bluntness. He banged his right hand, bent into a firm fist, against the side of his cart in obvious anger. "She's bait! You wonder why Miko, and not the other kids? Because she is 'my' human and Starscream knows it. That's why her! It's safe to assume he'd like Soundwave back too, but no way we're going to ask him to give himself up. That bot is broken just as bad as I was. We just can't. But I have a choice."

"What they frag are we supposed to do?" Wheeljack whispered, frustrated and despairing as realization dawned. He grabbed Bulkhead by the arm and pulled him toward the door, so he could continue the talk in hushed tones. Smokescreen stepped over with them without needing to be asked.

"Exchange Knockout for Miko?" Bulk' whispered back and shook his head just a little. "Not a slaggin' chance. We're not doing that. We don't play the game 'Scream's way. Anyway, Arcee would kill us all if we let him do this."

"Hey, he volunteered willingly..." Smokescreen began to say. But still judging by the look on his face-plate, he was in danger of becoming sick and quickly. Nevertheless, Bulkhead shot him a look so harsh the young bot's mouth instantly snapped shut.

"For Primus' sake, man," Wheeljack mumbled stepping back toward Knockout with a hand extended to place on his shoulder panel. "You've got a beautiful little youngling to raise..."

"A youngling who deserves to grow up knowing her creator didn't go down, a slaggin' coward," knockout answered. But his answer was just a bit too quiet and hurried, and frame his trembled now, clearly from fear. Still, he looked up at each one of his nearby teammates with a look in his optics that said he was not backing down or backing out.

"We've got a decent plan already," Bulkhead said. "The three of us, we run from the ground bridge with blaster's blazing. We fight as hard as we need and we kill Screamer if we need to save Miko. We're bringing her back with us, you mark my words."

But Knockout only shook his head, sad, and shaky. He looked like it was nearly his turn to almost be sick, and he rested his right hand against the side of the cart, using his hand to steady himself, as his strength and sense of balance, which he'd worked so hard to regain, looked about to fail him. "It won't work. I know Starscream better than any of you. He's impossibly quick, and smarter than you know, completely crazy and without any and all moral compass. He wants what he wants, and he's beyond psychotic. There's a good chance he'll kill Miko on the stop, before anyone gets close enough to do a thing about it, as soon as he realizes you've come without me."

"What if..." Smokescreen dared to open his mouth again and speak. But this time he thought intently, scheming as he did so. "What if he did take him? Starscream wants to use Miko for Knockout bait, right? Maybe we can use Knockout as Starscream bait instead. We make like we're willing to make the trade… One of us grabs Miko as soon as we can, and the others pull blasters and fire at will for as long as it takes. We get Miko to Knockout as quickly as possible and call to bridge them back fast. That frees up the third bot..."

"That's not bad, Kid," Wheeljack said, nodding. "But we have no time to perfect this plan of yours. We gotta wing this, and if anything goes wrong..."

"If it goes wrong, we keep on winging this," Knockout said, smiling nervously. "We'll make it work. We're Autobots. And if I'm wrong, then at least a human being doesn't need to die for a war that was never her people's, because I wanted my chance at redemption. Get Miko and run for it..."

"You three ready to ground bridge?" questioned Arcee's voice out loud over Bulk's commlink.

The big green bot shook his head a little, panicking at the true realization that Arcee obviously had to even notice her bondmate missing yet. And thinking back, he remembered how he'd seen Knockout hold his little one so close to his frame while he whispered something to her that no one would ever hear.

"Arcee's gonna kill us..." he mumbled, to cover up any hint of the things that were really on his mind.

"Ready, Arcee," He said into his comm.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes/ And yet another long one. I must admit this chapter was frustrating as anything to write. It's far more of an action chapter, and I don't consider myself the best at writing actions and battle scenes, which as you may have guessed from the last one, are certainly in here. I tried. I really tried. I'm not completely happy with this one even after multiple edits. But I'm not sure I will be even with multiple more. What can you do…**

 **As always thanks for reading and reviewing, which is useful to me as I love the feedback for future chapters.**

When Jack jumped from the cab of Ratchet's vehicle mode, he almost expected it might be at least a little bit like old times, even given the seriousness of the whole situation. Still, though, his heart had been sinking steadily during the short bridge trip over, and even well before that. And it sunk further when he instantly caught sight of Arcee, sitting on the far side of the large and mostly empty room, staring down at a datapad in her hands with a faraway and despairing look on her face-plate.

"Jack," Ratchet said then, speaking in strangely hushed tones. The old bot transformed quickly back to bot mode, and immediately he lifted the human up, unexpected from the floor. Realizing at once the bot meant only to relay serious information and quietly, he sat down on the old bots hand, and with feet dangling casually over the edge, he looked up and paid attention. The medic shook his head very slightly and gave a strange and disbelieving look as he went on speaking with the human at optic level. "Knockout took off with the wreckers and Smokescreen. He didn't say a word about it to Arcee. Just rolled off and left. I can only imagine he's determined to help take down Starscream.."

For a fraction of a second, Jack thought little about it. In his mind, the bots battled all the time. It was simply what they did. And the Autobots, against all odds, outgunned and far outnumbered, still so often managed to come back the winners. So what if one more fought for them instead of against. Surely he had done so before. Jack reasoned instantly, the Knockout had certainly broken rank by going when told to stay behind. But again so what? He had never seen an army anywhere, more inclined to break rank than Autobots. An act that to most would have been a crime worthy of discipline and serious action, the 'bots seemed to have turned almost into a national sport.

But just as quickly, he remembered the bot in question, as he'd last seen him over the commlink. And he shook his head in bewilderment and shock. And he looked up at the huge Autobot, with dread spreading over his face.

"Knockout has got to be useless now on a battlefield," he whispered urgently. "Not to mention a danger to the others. What were the wreckers thinking, letting him go?"

"I… don't know, Jack," Ratchet replied, clearly just as baffled and filled with concern. "This is bad. This is very bad." He looked as though he was about to say so much more. But he didn't and instead just stood silent and shaking his head just slightly

"Let me go and talk to Arcee," the human said after another second. And nodding, the old bot gently put him down onto the floor.

Jack crossed the room in fast, running steps. He was, he had to admit to himself, hardly as good a climber as Miko, who'd always managed to scale anything inside an Autobot base like it was nothing at all. But he certainly could do it, when he tried. And carefully, using support slats and a couple of large bolts as hand and foot holds, he climbed up to the seat of the bench. Shuffling over quickly, she sat quietly next to his bot partner. Eager as he'd been to talk to her, to try his best to help however he could, Jack found himself now without any clue at all, of what exactly he was supposed to say.

"Hey, Arcee," he said, finally settling only on the simple greeting. He would let her talk to him about whatever it was she felt like talking about.

"Hey Jack," the bot answered quietly. She looked up slowly, clearly only noticing for the first time that he had even arrived at all.

"Where's Cybershock?" Jack asked, perhaps more concerned then he knew he should have been, at not seeing the child with her carrier. He struggled a brief second to remember the little's one name, and hoped he indeed had it right.

"She's outside with Speedbreaker," Arcee answered, distractedly. And a second later she shook her head slightly in response to Jack's slightly confused look. She went on to quickly add, "Sorry. Speedy is 'Bee's intended bondmate. You'll meet her later. Cybershock was so fussy, crying and crying, refusing to eat… Speedy wondered if a change of scenery might help, so I let her take her to the courtyard."

"Poor little bot," Jack muttered, partly because he certainly didn't like to think of any child upset; either Human or Cybertronain. But mostly because he really had no idea what else to say about anything.

"She never cries, Jack. A tiny cry when she's hungry, or she wants to be picked up. But nothing like this. She wants her creator. She was always his little girl… He worked out quickly, how to carry her on his lap while still driving the cart safely at the same time. He carries her with him a lot in the daytime because that's something he can do."

"Hey Arcee, Knockout will come back. The wreckers wouldn't let anything happen to him. Granted those two are a bit.. well, more Miko's kind of bots than mine. But they wouldn't even think about using him for the mission if they didn't have a plan."

"He's not like other bots," Arcee mumbled, clearly upset and with good and logical reason. "I told you once he's worked so hard to do so many things. But what about everything he can't do? His health is far from perfect. He tires so quickly because everything is so much more effort. He could go into processor reboot with seconds warning." Arcee looked up then with frustration in her optics. "To scrap with whatever the wreckers and Smokescreen might have been thinking. What the frag was Knockout thinking?"

"Well… you can ask him, as soon as he gets back with the other bots and Miko," Jack said, helpless and trying to say anything to make her believe in some form of hope in that moment.

But Arcee was obviously not in any mood to discuss the subject any further at the moment, and when she didn't any back, the two of them fell into silence for a while. Jack took a moment to look around the large room he was in inside the base. The place, he saw at once, was far bigger than the makeshift base the bots had used on Earth. Just the room he was currently in, a room filled with huge benches, and a big machine he remembered was used to dispense the bots' daily fuel, was probably larger than the entire Earth base had been. Huge shelves lined a far wall and those were filled with data pads and even things Jack was sure he could recognize as games meant simply for fun and recreation time. And hallways led away from the room, through several open doors on each wall. He looked a moment at the huge comms computer, that took up at least half on one far wall, and the ground bridge control, beside it. He recognized those at once and he also recognized the bot that presently manned the comm. Soundwave. And the strange and deadly, silent bot appeared to never have noticed him at all. Though Jack knew that hardly meant he truly hadn't.

He sat a moment, watching the bot, working intently with an Autobot computer. And he reflected a second on the utter strangeness of that alone. He remembered then that it had been he and his friends, who had once sent this bot to the shadow zone. And with sudden and heart-dropping dread, he imaged that Soundwave, now that he was somehow once again free, was surely planning his revenge. How, by the way, _had_ he gotten back again? Jack knew his silent question would so likely never have an answer.

"Soundwave here has quickly become our go-to bot for anything tech support and advanced tracking," Ratchet said from the center of the room, and Jack realized how intently he must have been staring with fear on his face because the old bot had obviously noticed it himself. Ratchet chuckled just slightly and said, almost too casually. "Perfectly fine with me, too. Since these outdated, glitchy systems are generally no match for him, he can deal with them. Primus knows I've nearly kicked the thing more than once. I've got so much more time freed up to work with the medical side of things, and with so many refugees on back on Cybertron again, that really is a more than full-time job."

"Acree told me once, this place is eventually going to become a hospital," Jack said, mostly to make conversation. He hoped Arcee would join in.

Ratchet opened his mouth to speak again, obviously about to answer. But the second he did, a metallic, Cybertronain bird flew from a place Jack had not even noticed until then, up near the high ceiling on the rim of a light fixture, and drove straight for the arm of the bench Jack sat on with Arcee. He recognized the creature at once, as the smallest member of the Decepticon forces, with a reputation of reputation to match that of the faction. And surprisingly feared and dreaded, for a bot of such small size. At present though, perched on the bench and looking around with curious little red optics, the tiny bot didn't look nearly so dangerous.

"Jack, be carefree if you are going to say hello," Ratchet said, when the human extended a slow and hesitant hand out to the bird-bot, unsure exactly how one was meant to go about interacting with such a creature in the first place. "Soundwave will always be particularly protective toward Laserbaek. She's basically like his own youngling."

* * *

"Nothing about this is a good idea," Bulkhead muttered to the others, keeping his voice low as the four bots approached the end of the ground bridge.

"It's far from being a good idea," Smokescreen replied at once, while he only stomped forward stubborn and determined. "But it may just be the best chance we've got."

"Shooting that fragger 'con dead in a pool of his own energon, blowing him into bits before he even sees us draw blasters, now that may just be a better idea than using our own teammate to bait him," Wheeljack said.

"Do you think Miko's really still alright?" Knockout asked while he rolled the cart forward at pretty close to its top speed. Even though he was driving it faster than he usually dared to push it, still the others walked at only a slower power walk, to let him keep up.

"'Course she is," Bulk' answered at once. "She's Miko. She's a little wrecker." He cringed momentarily at the slow speed he was keeping. It was, he figured hardly ideal or suitable for such a mission. And every one of his battle trained instincts told him he should have been racing from the bridge already in a speeding vehicle mode, ready to transform already running, and with blasters firing. And he knew full well that there were risks in keeping the bridge open for that long with enemies nearby.

Bulkhead ordered the bridge closed the very second all four were clear of it. And he looked around him taking in the scene his team had arrived at in seconds. Starscream stood close to the edge of a high cliff, below which the Boiling River – which served to carry super-heated, boiling oil which churned up constantly from toward the core of Cybertron, off across the planet, to dump it, by then partially cooled, into natural basins scattered, over the planet and reached by its many streams – flowed under the constant cover of its steam. His back was to the place the bridge had been, and he held Miko, struggling helplessly, dangling from her backpack straps held by his finger tips, with his right hand. Nearby were only two troopers and neither one held a weapon at the ready or appeared even remotely ready to shoot.

"I said, put me down you creaky metal tin can!" Miko hollered from her place, held high in the air, supported dangerously by mostly the straps of her backpack.

"Or what?" Starscream taunted dangerously. "The Autobots will come and get me? I know they're here already. I'm not stupid. I know they're behind me. Probably each holding blasters and ready to fire."

"Yes," said Miko, in a tone of exasperation far more than one of any fear at all. "And you'll need to put me down in order to properly shoot at them with either your arm cannons or integrated blasters… which you'll need to do quickly, or they'll blow your head off."

"Shut up, you ridiculous disgusting skin bag. I can shoot perfectly fine with one hand," Starscream shrieked in reply. "Even one-handed, I'm twenty times the warrior any Autobot will ever be!" And Bulkhead, despite the seriousness of the situation, could not help but take pride in 'his' human and her quick thinking, even if she had failed at a plan she must have quickly improvised.

"Anyway, none of the Autobots are going to shoot at me, even for the slim chance they could indeed blow my head off as you say," Starscream went on, in a tone now dripping with both superiority and his own clear insanity. Moving slowly, he turned around to face them, and snarled in their direction, across the jagged ground, "a Cybertronain firefight, with a tiny human caught right in the middle of it? Anyone of us would surely kill her in a second if we should fall to blaster fire. You won't risk it."

Bulkhead stood, with his blaster in front of him, aiming well and certain of hitting the 'con square in the front of his head with one well placed shot, he knew he could make. But the way Starscream held Miko, the angle was all very wrong. The chance was far too great that he would fall forward, off-lined in an instant and crushing the tiny human to death instantly, under his fallen weight. Then there was the slightly smaller chance he might just drop her instead, flinging her from his fingertips, with no control over his body at the second he fell, but should that happen, the chance was good that she might just be flung through the air and right into the Boiling River, not far away. There was some chance of course that he might just fall backward, or into some other awkward position from which Miko, perhaps banged up from the fall she would take, would escape otherwise fine. But the chance was too small, and the risk far too great. Bulk, pulled his finger slowly back from the trigger of his blaster. And beside him, on either side, he saw Wheeljack and Smokescreen do the very same, after having so obviously made the same grime calculations.

Bulk', though he fully understood and agreed with Ratchet's reasons for ordering her not to, wished Arcee had been along on the mission. He had to admit if only to himself, that he had no real idea what to do. Perhaps the best course of action left was to promise Starscream his freedom, and agree to honor any demands he may just make besides. But without a commanding officer, he was in no place to make that call. And he was far from completely sure he could successfully reach her now on a private comm frequency without it being somehow intercepted.

"How wonderful to see you again, _Herr_ _Kommandant,_ " Knockout said, speaking up unexpectedly while he rolled the cart forward across the field of metal shards.

And Bulkhead, suddenly horrified at the bold action, took one small and helpless step forward after him. There was no way, he reasoned fast, that he and his team could hope to save him now, not with Starscream holding Miko as he was, and with the risk a flurry of blaster fire now posed. He thought seconds too late that he ought to have told his teammate that, told him discreetly as he could have, that he plan had just changed. But he knew that Knockout, though he'd never been close to being a front liner, had done his own calculation of risk and he already knew that himself. And yet, Bulk' understood with dismay, he was clearly determined to do it anyway.

"Knockout!" Starscream exclaimed with a terrible snarl spreading over his face-plate, "well this was certainly unexpected." As he finished up quickly with the obvious sarcasm, his face-plate sifted suddenly into a look of complete disbelief and distaste, while he stared his former teammate up and down across the field. "I was informed you'd been damaged, but your condition is just… unimaginable."

"My word, Knockout," Starscream went on ranting, while he took two slow steps toward him, with Miko still swinging from his fingertips by her pack. He shook his head dramatically, and shuddered, so clearly on purpose. "If I had to live even a short time in a state even half as bad as yours, I would have already thrown myself into a smelting pit. Primus knows it would save anyone else the trouble… and me the humiliation..."

"Perhaps you should," Knockout said. He advanced forward himself a fair ways before he stopped the cart and just stared up at the bot that had once been both the bot he called a friend and the one who had a great hand in destroying him.

Starscream tipping his head just slightly to the left and looked confused. "Perhaps I should, what?"

"Perhaps you should throw yourself into a smelting pit," Knockout answered. His eyes burning with a fury no Autobot had seen from him since they'd once battled him as a 'con himself. "You'd do less damage that way, to both yourself and society."

"Knockout..." Miko said quietly, looking down and right at him now from her place still hanging dangerously in the air. It was not exactly clear what she meant to say in that one simple acknowledgment. And the straps of her pack were badly slipping.

Watching, and unsure exactly what to do, while time around him seemed to slow to a crawl, Bulkhead wondered if perhaps he ought to hope the straps would indeed slip or simply break. Miko might well be injured in the fall, but it was doubtful such a drop would kill her. Knowing what he knew of humans, he doubted it was quite high enough for that. He imagined in a second, a scenario where she managed to run for it, make for the road, as he knew she would, while the Autobots finally unleashed the power of their blasters, now without the risk to her. But then again, she was practically upside down…

"Knockout," Starscream proclaimed, his tone of voice sounding every bit sickeningly superior, as he stomped a few more steps across the field, further closing the distance. And to the Autobots' dread and horror, he raised his arm-mounted weapon up in front of him, clearly reading himself to fire right at the unarmed and helpless defector's spark chamber. "For the crime of defection, I sentence you to immediate death. We'll make a fair example of you. Show any others that think of daring to walk away from under my rule, what happens if they try it!"

"Uh uh, Screamer," Bulkhead said. He flung his blaster back securely over his shoulder by its strap and took a few heavy steps forward with both of his hands in fists of anger. "You don't make the rules, and you don't get to decide who lives and who dies. I suggest you knock this off and give yourself up here and now, or when we do bring you down, which we will, your end will be a hundred times worse." He was about to say more. To tell the sparkless 'con that Knockout had a bondmate and a tiny daughter. But he was unsure if Starscream had any knowledge at off of either of those facts. And if he indeed had not a clue, then why not keep Arcee's status as bonded unrevealed. Why not keep tiny Cybershock's existence a secret altogether?

"Such hard and menacing words for a soft sparked, Autobot," Starscream taunted, evilly. "Back away Bulkhead. Knockout is dead metal. But I might just let you have your little Miko back alive and well."

"Starscream, you've gone and lost your fraggin' mind," Knockout snapped. He held himself as straight as he possibly could on his cart, and gesturing with his functional hand, he looked far stronger than he ever had, perhaps even before his tragic malfunction. "The war is over. Please, stop with the endless need for battle. Everyone else already has. We are rebuilding. Help us."

"I don't want to rebuild Cybertron alongside your pathetic Autobots. I was meant to rule! Our side was supposed to win. Megatron always told me our victory was assured. And… he won't rule now. He walked away. So, it's mine. I… I was next in line..." Starscream was rambling on, talking too fast and barely making any coherent sense. And never once did he lower his blaster

"We were friends once," Knockout said. He spoke quickly, sadness and desperation clear in the tone of his voice. "Or at least we tried to be, for a while. I might have been one of the few you thought you could actually trust on board that ship. Perhaps you still could..."

"Shut up you… you broken scrap pile. You have no right to talk to me, without a remaining obvious function. And you… you turned against me and ran..."

"I had to do what I knew was right. You would never have come with me. And you were about to kill the Autobots, and let our home face its certain end, running like a screaming coward."

"When you ran off to join the Autobots, you left me at the mercy of our leader, who would have seen me dead at his feet in a pool of my energon the second I ceased to be useful. You wouldn't have known then that Megatron would never come back!" Starscream dropped then to the ground, transforming low in the air, and flipping in his bot form so that he could land on his feet. Immediately he advanced slowly toward Knockout again, with his blaster at the ready. His optics burned with anger, but far more with a kind of madness rarely seen on a bot.

"You're dead!" He screamed. "Dead for being broken. Dead for defecting. Dead for having a spark!"

"Don't you dare kill him," Miko screamed as Starscream aimed his blaster. "Knockout is a good bot. A million times more useful to Cybertron than you'll ever be. Someone should have ripped the spark out of your chest the first chance they had." She struggled again, and this time harder than before, finally tuning herself enough in the air so that she could bend her body at her waist, kicking her feet forward with enough force to somehow snap the book bag straps from her excessive motion. With a tiny sequel at the suddenness of the long drop, she crashed hard to the ground.

* * *

From his place at the computer, Soundwave opened a space-bridge portal, and immediately though roared Bumblebee in his vehicle mode, with Raf riding in the front passenger seat. 'Bee stopped fast, with a little squeal of his brakes, and strangely enough, he popped open his trunk. Raf hopped out quickly and ran around to the back, where he began to quickly unload a decent number of plastic bags into the middle of the common room floor.

"Sorry we're late," he explained, talking quickly, as he unloaded. "Agent Fowler called while just before 'Bee arrived to grab me. He'd gotten us a purchasing order to get what we needed. So I had 'Bee stop at target so I could buy groceries and supplies."

"Good thinking Raf and 'Bee," Arcee said, surprised and taken aback by the near grown up efficiency of this now not so small human boy.

"Toothbrushes, Toothpaste, shampoo, soap, towels, toilet paper..." Raf muttered, unloading and inventorying the items as he sorted them into piles in the middle of the floor. "Basic groceries, Five loaves of bread, soup, meat, fruit, veggies, all of it canned… I did get fresh fruit too but it needs to be eaten pretty quickly. I didn't pick up water because 'Bee said we've got the ability to filter yours for our safe drinking water, and of course we can wash with it too. But no real refrigeration apparently… oh yes, and blankets too. Three different colors so we'll know whose is whose. Miko would probably smack me if I'd grabbed her a pink one, so hers is green instead…"

He stopped talking suddenly and looked up again, eyed right in front of him, staring in shock at Soundwave, clearly registering in his mind only then, who it was he was actually looking at. He was currently holding a rolled up blanket – a red one- in his hands, and he threw the thing forward a few feet in shock before stumbling backward in his seated position and falling over backward, nearly smacking his head on the floor before he caught himself.

"The Autobots say you.. you've defected from the 'cons," he said slowly and obviously uneasy. Quickly he sat back up straight, on the floor again "N… nice to hear another bot made it out of there..."

Arcee, still sitting on the bench close to the back wall paid close attention, observing the situation with unblinking optics, and ready to act in under a second if something should happen to go wrong. But all the same, she knew that Soundwave needed to be trusted, assumed capable of more the safe and civil behavior he had shown already since the humans had arrived. And quick glanced exchanged with both Ratchet and 'Bee told her that they both felt the very same.

Soundwave only appeared to completely ignore Raf entirely at first, continuing to study the monitor in front of him. Once his fingertip tapped against the keyboard flipping from the commlink to a map, which he continued to look at. Finally, though he slowly turned his head, turning away from the console so he could instead look down at the boy. With obvious uncertainty, he slowly gave the tiny human a single nod of his head in acknowledgment. Not a second later he turned quickly back to his work.

A sliding door across the room, on the other side, slid open and Speedbreaker walked back in calmly. She held Cybershock, still wide awake but at least slightly happier, in her arms. The baby still pouted and murmured, clearly unhappy and despairing. But at least the loud and steady cries of earlier in the day had stopped, and she mostly just looked around the room with wide optics, unable to settle herself to recharge. Arcee stood up quickly and immediately she reached out to take her child from her friend. The two young humans, busy now with unloading the groceries and supplies into the bottom shelf of a shelving until that made them look just as small as any bot did, both jumped to their feet quickly and with clear excitement. And then proceeded to slowly creep across the room toward them, trying to get a hesitant and curious look at the little bot, as Arcee sat back down again.

"Come over here and meet the little youngling," Arcee called over to the boys, chuckling a little at their suddenly nervous and creeping footsteps.

"Can we?" Raf questioned, eyes lighting up with excitement as he crept slowly closer, with Jack just slightly ahead of him.

"Of course," Arcee said, chuckling a little again. And Ratchet hurriedly lifted both of the humans, one of them in each hand, up onto the bench, where they each promptly sat themselves down, one on either side, and looked closely at the tiny youngling.

"I've never seen a baby transformer before," Jack said slowly, after 'Bee had lifted him up onto the bench, and he'd wiggled his way across it, in order to get closer. "Ratchet says there are so few of them anywhere now… "

"She's the first child born on Cybertron itself in centuries. And so far there it looks like there may be only a small handful of others anywhere," Arcee explained, nodding her head a little.

"She's so cute." Raf smiled at the youngling, and grinned when she smiled right back. And as he grinned at her, he studied carefully, before finally he remarked in a tone of curiosity, "hey shouldn't she have visible wheels?"

"Cybershock won't have wheels for a while yet, Raf,"Ratchet chuckled, joining in the conversation. "Not until she chooses her first vehicle mode. And that won't be for a long time yet."

"I'm sorry,' Arcee mumbled after a moment, busy now paying attention to her youngling, while of course worrying the same worry for her mate, and thinking of a hundred terrible things she imagined could easily have happened while saying not a word about it. She shook her head a little, to shake off distracted, racing thoughts, and gestured toward Speedy, who stood nearby. The young refugee was obviously just as curious about the first two humans she had ever seen, as they were about the youngling. "This is Speedbreaker. Speedy, these are mine and 'Bee's human partners."

Jack stayed where he was, sitting beside Arcee, smiling at Cybershock, and even managing to make her giggle and then laugh with a bright grin on her face-plate, as he made ridiculous faces at her. But Raf jumped up immediately, to stand on the bench.

"Nice to meet ya," he said quickly.

Speedbreaker may indeed have been very small for an Adult Cybertronain. Noticeably smaller and a fair bit lighter even than Arcee. But still she a bot, and much larger than the little human, who even standing on the bench, stood below the high of her chest panel. And therefore, Arcee, despite her worry and distracted mood, had to laugh out loud, when Raf extended a hand, clearly intended to shake hers.

"Likewise, young human," said Speedy, after she's stood for one long moment and only looked baffled by the gesture entirely. Finally, and grinning now, she slowly extended the index finger of her right hand out of the human, and let him shake that in a modified try and 'handshaking.'

"'Bee's told me all about you," Raf chattered excitedly. "He said you were pretty, and friendly, and smarter than him. And that you work making energon candy to sell in your family store's for a living, but you really wanna be an engineer instead. He said you love Cybertron and history, and you like to know things, but mostly you make him happy." Raf grinned then, and went on, slower this time, "'Bee's my friend. I'm glad he found someone to be happy with forever."

"Speedy," said Bumblebee, laughing a little now, at Raf's fast and excited try at congratulating the pair, "I should stay with the team. We're still waiting for Soundwave to receiving updates on the status of the other. But why don't you give these two humans the ground tour of the base?"

"I could do that," Speedbreaker grinned, turning to grin as well at both of the humans on the bench.

Raf stepped forward at once, turning then so that he could climb down to the floor. Speedbreaker however, gently snatched him up before he could do so. The quick nod she gave the others, an expression of relief on her face-plate, at not having him on the floor, told Arcee that she was clearly more comfortable with simply carrying a human leaning against her bent arm and holding onto her shoulder panel, then she was with trying now to step on one that ran beside her on the ground. She extended the other arm, turning slightly, and obviously confident in her ability to carry two. But Jack only stayed where he was, sitting with his own bot partner and her baby, and shaking his head a little.

"I'll see the place later," he said slowly, but clearly decided. "Right now, I'm staying with Arcee."

But Arcee shook her head immediately and stood up, with the baby bot, who she walked into the center of the room carrying.

"'Bee take her for me please," she said. And as the black and yellow Autobot stood, looking baffled at the tiny colorful youngling that had just been plopped gently into his arms, she explained, decisively. "I can't just sit around and let my own bondmate, who has no business out there in the first place, risk his metal on a mission I should have taken in the first place. I'm going to help. I'll be back for her soon."

* * *

Bulkhead stood watching, frozen on the spot, as Miko fell backward onto the hard ground beneath her. And he watched as she rolled herself quickly over, jumping to her feet in under a second, without even appearing to notice the blood that had begun to soak the left sleeve of the button down she wore. Starscream, growling with rage, spun on his heel, turning at once, in an attempt to grab her immediately. He bent forward, as she ran, with the typical boldness that only she could possibly dare to display, underneath his long legs and around the left one, trying so obviously to make him trip himself up while keeping track of her. And he growled again, a barely civilized animal-like noise, as indeed he nearly did trip over his left foot with his right, before the human, limping considerably and again barely appearing to notice, hurried away toward the cliff's edge that had been behind her. Bulk' snapped himself quickly out of his state of frozen disbelief and quickly, while the 'con was still only growing and huffing wordlessly with his frustration and rage, he raised his blaster.

One fast calculation, made in his processor in under a second, told him that Miko, who he'd watched dive fast for cover behind a decently sized jagged metal chuck a fair run from there, was more than clear of danger. And in that second, as such things always had in battle, everything turned to chaos at once, while time itself appeared to nearly stop.

Starscream, turned a fraction of a turn on his heel once again, as though at first he was determined to pursue his dropped human hostage. But instead, he turned right back again with yet another psychotic raging growl and aimed his weapon right back at Knockout, who had managed to back himself up a fair bit, though still not nearly enough, as his top speed. His intention was more than clearly to make it to the cover of the overhangs made by some cliffs that rose up from the farthest edge of the field.

A shot from Smokescreen's blaster, fired a second before it was too late, struck the furious 'con in the chest panel, missing his spark chamber, but still sending him stumbling back a little. The blaster beam he had fired himself the second he had been hit, missed Knockout by a mile, cutting through empty air and sending chunks of the cliff behind them crumbling away. Bulkhead, sure now that both Knockout and Miko, were at least for that second safe and determined to keep them that way, aimed his own weapon. For a fraction of a second he stood, heavy blaster, aimed right at Starscream's spark panel, and the energon heating inside his body, rising with his own anger. For that second he wanted to shoot the 'con commander right through his spark, and he knew well that he could do it. He wanted revenge for Miko, for the terrible 'con's daring to kidnap her of any human. He wanted to issue him a quick and instant execution, as Starscream would have done to Knockout, had Smokescreen only been half a second slower. Bulk' lowered the blaster just a little and quickly, managing a nonfatal shot in the other side of his panel, dented badly from the shot he had already taken.

"Don't just stand there you pair of useless scarp eaters," Starscream bellowed at the troopers, who stood still awaiting orders by the cliff's edge. "Shoot the Autobots down; Knockout with them. And grab that little human!"

Wheeljack, running across the field toward the cliff's edge and obviously thinking he might grab Miko fast himself, dodged a deadly blaster beam, and aimed a fast drawn blaster into the air, shooting down one of the flying troopers just as soon as he had transformed and dared to take flight, and before that one could shoot at any of them again. Every one of the team, except for Bulkhead, moved to take cover then, either behind huge metallic rocks that littered the field here and there or under and against the high cliffs behind them on two sides.

"You coward Autobot," Starscream snarled, as he leaped from the ground, transforming instantly in order to take to the air. "You should have shot me right through the spark when you had your chance just a second ago. The war would be over and you'd be the hero who brought down Lord Starscream! But then, you never did have much spark for killing. Did you? You'll never be remembered as anything greater than a simple construction bot, who fell to my blaster when you could instead have saved your worthless friends!"

"Give it up, Starscream," Bulkhead warned seriously, while he took careful aim toward the sky. He was furious now, but through his anger, he focused hard on aiming. And all the while he was aware on some level, that he had probably just sounded far more like so many other Autobots and less like himself, in that simple spoken line.

"Never!" The 'con screamed, over his own engine noise. He flew fast wide circles over the field and the bots in it, firing his weapons once in a while almost idly, and managing to hit the cliffs and the boiling river more than he even bounced a shot off a bot's armor. "I'll destroy every one of you. I'll never surrender. Never! I'll destroy every Autobot on Cybertron. And then I will rule! I'll succeed where Megatron failed because I'm smarter than he ever was. I'm better than him. And I'm far better than anyone of you!"

 _'_ _Old Screamer's finally gone and lost it,'_ Wheeljack's voice said suddenly over a private commlink. And Bulkhead, acknowledging only with a nod in his direction so small it would never have been noticed had it not be expected, quickly added Smokescreen and Knockout to the comm link.

 _'_ _I'll say he's lost it,'_ Bulk' answered quickly. He dodged the one blaster beam that so far come even close to hitting him, and quickly worked out a plan. ' _Smokescreen, you call for a bridge and get Knockout to it. Wheeljack, grab Miko and take her to Knockout, who will bridge out with her. Then you two stay on this side, we take down Screamer, and call for a second bridge back with him well secured.'_

 _'_ _I'd ask for some decent cover fire, bulk. But Starscream clearly couldn't hit the broad side of a barn today, as they say on Earth.'_ Wheeljack chuckled over the commlink as soon as he had dashed out from the cover of the cliffs and set off in a dead run across the field.

 _'_ _Don't mean he can't still hit you.'_ Smokescreen warned, perhaps stating a little too much of the obvious. _'Seriously, what the frag is Starscream doing? If he hasn't completely lost his processor as well as his targeting, then this is some trick and it makes no sense._ '

"I'll build my empire on the site of your first new city," Screaming shrieked as he flew, and after a couple whole minutes of nothing but horrible laughter from his jet form he went right on ranting. "Every neutral on this world and any yet to return will face a choice. Pledge their allegiance to me, or die. But never fear, Autobots. For those that live, it will be more than worthwhile. Cybertron will succeed and the people along with it. Finally a planet worthy of it's name. Something it should have been centuries ago. Something it could have been before Megatron lost his way. I can do it. I can do anything! I can. I can!"

 _'Something's very wrong_ ,' Smokescreen said, again over the private commlink. He dove then from his own cover, and started his dead run toward Knockout, as the red bot stayed under the cliff overhand he'd managed to remain safe under. Once, he held up a hand to make a simple single to Knockout to stay where he was, to wait for him. And his damaged teammate only nodded once quickly, his understanding obvious.

And Bulkhead, watching the exchange from the safety of his own cover and ready to jump out and run himself, leaned out to fire his blaster again into the air, as his enemy's jet form zoomed directly overhead. Before he could even pull the trigger though, his optics opened wide with shock, as he watched Starscream bank hard to the right, within under a meter of a near nose first dive right into a cliff face.

"Scrap," Bulkhead mumbled out loud, stunned at seeing a near devastating crash, from a flier who all of Cybertron knew should never in a million years have come nearly so close to crashing.

"Fly much?" Miko yelled, daring again to taunt the 'con from her place, behind the same rocks she had first taken cover behind. And though he thought her brazenly bold even for Miko, in that situation, Bulk sighed slightly with relief at hearing her shout like that, if only because it meant she was still alive and at least mostly okay.

 _'_ _What in the fragging name of Primus is wrong with that bot?'_ Wheeljack questioned, baffled, over the commlink, while he made a dead run across the battlefield toward the tiny human's place of cover.

"Shut up you…. You… Every one of you, shut up..." Starscream began to rant and scream, as soon as he had corrected himself and turned in the air to fly, still far too low, at great speed in the other direction. But he was only repeating himself almost nonsensically, as he fired his weapons before nearly smashing his jet form against the cliffs opposite the one he had always nearly stuck before.

Starscream's shooting was so oddly bad, that it well may have been only luck on his part, that one good shot finally hit home. But sure enough, it had. And Wheeljack, still in mid-run across the openness of the field of metal shards, fell suddenly, dropping to his knees before quickly landing face first flat on the ground awkwardly with a pool of blue glowing energon spreading fast from somewhere beneath his chest panel.

"Frag you!" Bulkhead screamed toward the sky, furious now.

He stared into the sky, blaster at the ready and energon flowing fast and heating rapidly, through his frame. Time in that second felt as though it as slowed down to a crawl. And he watched in slow motion, as a blaster beam cut through the air before it struck the 'con commander's left wing tip. For a mere fraction of a second, Bulk felt the satisfaction of the near perfect hot. But just as quickly, it occurred to him that he what not even managed to fire yet. He turned around fast then, glancing quickly across the battlefield, where he expected, quite logically that he would find Smokescreen standing and ready to fire a follow-up shot to match his first. But the blue and yellow bot was beside Knockout already, ground bridge open behind him and shoving had against the arms rests of the red bot's cart, while knockout shook his head yelling something not quite coherent, clearly now refusing to bridge away. Bulk knew then that Smokescreen had obviously not fired that shot. Wheeljack was unmoving on the ground…

The baffled Autobot, stunned and shaken, angry and shocked, had barely a second to dive out of the way as a vehicon trooper still in his own jet form and flying, but just as clearly damaged and falling, in urgent need of a place to land, dropped hard onto the ground, and rolled across it, transforming as he did so, almost in front of his big green feet. The vehicon, bleeding from a couple of blaster wounds of his own, but still functional, pulled himself up to an awkward kind of kneeling position, took aim over his head with his integrated weapon, landed a perfect shot against the tip of Starscream's other wing tip.

"What the frag are you doin'?" Bulk' exclaimed, questioning stupidly, although the answer was obvious and on most levels, he knew it. He realized in the fraction of a second he had to think about it, that he'd quite foolishly managed to forget all about the second of the troopers after Wheeljack had shot down the first one.

"Declaring my intention to defect," the trooper said, speaking quickly. He struggled with obvious difficulty to get to his feet, in a clearly bad state due to the extent of damage he's sustained. "I've never been offered a chance to take that option yet."

"Welcome to our side of the battle," Bulkhead said because he didn't exactly know what else to say by that point. He held out a hand to pull the injured and more than obviously stunned trooper to his feet because he didn't know what else to do. Quickly, and with a blink of his optics, trying to gather himself fast, Bulkhead aimed his blaster at the jet form above him and spinning badly in midair. "Your first order. Run!"

* * *

"Knockout," Smokescreen shouted, over the noise Starscream's engines, and steady blasts of weapons fire from every direction. "Get to the ground bridge!"

Smokescreen shoved the cart backward a fair ways and toward the bridge, with both of his hands against the arms rests clearly trying to make his point. But Knockout only shook his head at him. He shoved his left hand against the hand control, with his usual level of awkward efficiency, and jammed his right foot hard against the power pedal, working to force himself forward while he was shoved back.

Knockout hated to be pushed on the cart. It was, in fact quite possibly he one thing he thought he might just have hated most of anything in life. His insistence on driving it by himself was so well known to anyone that knew him, that in general bots just didn't push him, or even try to. In in the present moment, despite the seriousness of the situation, the weapons firing close to them, and the more than obvious danger, Knockout worked hard to fight back a growing urge to snap in frustration at his teammate, who tried to force him into a turn in a direction he did not wish to move in.

"I'm not going anywhere," he protested firmly, still forcing the cart forward against the strong push of his teammate. "We still need Miko, and now Wheeljack is on the ground. Primus knows if he's dead or alive..."

"You've done your part," Smokescreen yelled back. He took one hard away from the cart just long enough to wave it toward the open portal very close by. He gestured then across the field toward Starscream, who sat on the ground, struggling, trying to get to his feet but entirely unable to do so; growling and snarling his wordless rage as Bulkhead forced his hands behind his back and held him firmly. A vehicon trooper, the one that Knockout assumed at first must have run for it when the other one was shot down and offlined, stood next to Bulk for a moment, before strangely he ran to Wheeljack, still unmoving on the ground The trooper opened his small storage compartment quickly. And, quite bizarrely, by the time he had dropped again to the ground beside the fallen Autobot, he'd pulled out his field first aid kit.

Knockout watched Bulkhead across the field, still struggling with a furious and enraged Starscream, who, it was all too clear, would easily tear an Autobot's head clean off if he only could have if it meant a last chance it his freedom. And since he could not come close to doing that, he would undoubtedly die before he'd willing be captured alive.

Smokescreen let go of the cart, and quickly he stood up straight again. For what must only have been seconds but felt like many minutes, Knockout watched as the you bot, looked the center of the field, where Bulk' struggled furiously to contain Starscream, to place far to the left where Miko had taken cover, and finally to Wheeljack, still seemingly lifeless near the clearly side-switching trooper who showed at least some skill with the repair kit.

"You assist Bulkhead," Knockout said, still speaking loud over the noise of Starscream's horrible raging. "A handful of the vehicons are trained in field repair and that's obviously one of them. I can look for Miko."

The tiny human had not come out from her cover yet, though he imagined in a second that she should have by then. And that fact alone made the red bot's spark drop. He watched as Smokescreen shook his head just a little, still so clearly unsure of which direction he should run in, who needed him more.

"I can help," Knockout shouted, insisting and frustrated. "I'm not bridging back like some busted scrap pile. Let me help!"

With one more fast and still confused shake of his head, Smokescreen ran toward Bulkhead, blaster at the ready. And with that Knockout slammed his hand against the hand control with as much force he could possibly manage. His foot pressed hard against the pedal and he pushed his cart to its top speed quickly, making his way across the now almost still field with no one left to notice him.

"Help!" a voice called from somewhere hidden behind the rocks he was driving himself toward. "Someone please help."

Recognizing the pleading voice at once, as that of Miko, and hearing the strange and uncharacteristic helplessness of it, he pushed harder against the pedal under his right foot, trying instinctive to move faster though he could not do so as he had already reached his top possible speed. In growing frustration, as his spark dropped further, he rolled on forward, closing the distance to the rock and the cliff edge close behind them in the endless minutes it seemed to take him.

Miko, much to his horrified shock, had slipped somehow from the edge of the jagged drop behind the place she had hidden. And she hung mostly helpless and struggling, over the cliff's edge, with the boiling river far below her and ground beginning to crumble away from her scrambling for a handhold. Stopping the cart as close to the edge as he dared, and feeling like even that was far too close for comfort, Knockout leaned forward the very furthest he possibly could, pushing his sense of balance as far as he ever had. And from here he could just barely see the tiny human's tiny feet, in her near grip-less slip-on shoes, fumbling against the too smooth surface of the cliff, searching for a foot hold.

"Miko," Knockout said desperately and forgetting about about possible danger in that second. He inched the cart forward slightly further, bumping his hand and foot against the controls as lightly as he could to get only tiny movements from the machine. The front left tire was halfway to rolling over the edge when he locked his brake. "Quickly, can you reach my front wheel?"

The little human hang a moment in her dangerous and terrible position wide eyed and trembling with fright, and not moving an inch. But her right hand was only a good arms reach from the closest front tire, and finally, after another second she dared move her hand just enough to reach for it fast. The wheels, that Knockout had always thought so ridiculously and small, were suddenly huge to the human, and a grip on one with a single hand was impossible. But she managed somehow to shift again, so that she could hook her arm through the center and further drag herself up that way, until the other hand could grab for the same wheel.

And she sat, for the moment, legs still hanging awkwardly over the cliff's edge, body under one front wheel and gasping for breath with shock clear on her face. Finally she moved again quickly scrabbling up and to safety, resting again Knockout's foot rest, before moving again to use the front of his foot itself as her next handhold. She stopped then, hesitant before she grabbed the front of his foot and held on. He wasted no time in moving the cart, reversing it slowly away from the cliff's edge while she held on. But even when he stopped again, meters back from the edge, Miko moved only to turn herself a little beside his left foot, so that she could look up at him again.

"Are you able to climb up?" He asked, remembering her skill with climbing bots like they were her personal ladders, and concerned when she didn't try it at once.

"No way you'll do any damage by climbing," Knockout said with a laugh, as he thought he finally understood her hesitation in climbing up. "My youngling is far bigger than you are, and likely weighs at least twice as much."

Miko, moving quickly as she possibly could now, given the fact that she was somewhat injured herself, scrambled up onto Knockout's left foot. From there she made her way easily enough to his right hand, which he rested palm up in his lap, ready for her to climb into. He watched her as he rolled on again, rushed fast as he could toward the ground bridge, still open at the far side of the field. She opened her mouth as if she was about, but no sound came out, and with it still wordlessly wide open, she looked around the field, clearly trying hard to take in everything she was seeing all at once. Finally her mouth closed and opened again in a wordless mumble of overwhelmed confusion. Miko burst into tears before she could even try to speak again. He opened his own mouth then to speak, but before he could do so the tiny human's terrible and sudden crying stopped just as abruptly as it had started. And she fell unexpectedly unconscious, nearly tumbling from his hand before he quickly tuned it and bent his fingers a little in order to stop her falling off.

"You're a bit late to the party I'm afraid," Smokescreen was saying to someone a good distance away. And Knockout took a minute to fully register that someone was speaking at all. But when he finally did clue in, blinking to clear his processor and to gather himself, he looked to see his bondmate roaring away from the bridge in her vehicle mode. She transformed quickly and ran a short distance before she stopped to look around her, surveying the scene.

"Friendly?" she questioned, clearly almost baffled when her optics fell first on the 'con trooper, who had just nodded to Bulkhead, indicating that he'd done the little he thought he could do.

"Declared his defection on the battle field," Smokescreen answered quickly. "He helped us take down Starscream… and Knockout's got Miko."

"I… I don't know If I'd prefer to hug you or kill you," Arcee said next. And Knockout couldn't help but grow at least slightly nervous when he realized she was talking to him, while running in his direction.

"Kill me later," he said, moving forward while she turned to walk beside him. He gestured with his optics toward the human, still unconsciously on top of his right hand and lower arm. "I believe she's collapsed from shock. She was within likely seconds of falling from the cliffs and right into the river."

"I'm hauling this one straight into the brig," Bulkhead said, gesturing toward the 'con commander, who he'd finally forced onto his knees on the ground. "Ratchet can look him over when he's finally got time later. Wheeljack is a medical priority. I've comm'd Ratchet already. He's ready the second we bring him back in."

"Jobs well-done everybody," Arcee said, but judging by the tone of her voice she was clearly distracted, and likely hardly knew exactly what to say. Her optics left those of her bondmate, only long enough to glare at Starscream with enough rage to make any bot cringe. "This day's not over yet. Let's roll."


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes/ Wow this is late, late, late. I'm sorry for making you wait so long for an update. I'm still working on this story and yes I do plan to finish.** **I do hope the next update will be far sooner. I'll try my best.**

 **40 chapters along... seems a good time to update my disclaimer. I don't own Transformers. Hasbro does. I'm just borrowing their characters and the planet Cybertron, etc. Speedbreaker, baby Cybershock, Firestorm, and various other OCs are mine.**

Arcee had quickly taken her child gently back from Bumblebee, as soon as she had arrived back on base, running quickly among the rest of her team. Then there had been a few long moments of near complete chaos in the base, as too many things happened at once and too many bots moved in too many directions. But the bots were nothing if not efficient. And before she knew it, Starscream had been dumped, probably quite unceremoniously, into the brig, where he would stay until someone fond the time and motivation to further deal with him. And Wheeljack had been taken at once into the medbay, where Ratchet awaited him, set on getting started with major repairs without a moment to waste.

Miko, who had been unconscious in Knockout's hand when they had left the battlefield, had begun to regain consciously entirely on her own on the short trip back through the ground bridge. And by the time he had parked himself on the cart close to the wall and out of the way inside the common room, she was sitting up with little difficulty at all on the still extended palm of his hand and simply looked confused because she had missed the very end of the action.

Raf and Jack had taken up a place, sitting on their blankets on the floor in a far corner of the room, away from any danger of large and fast moving bot feet. But they ran quickly over to check on Miko and after some mumbling and nodding between the three of them, both of the boys had run to sit on or beside their own bot partners

Cybershock, still held by her carrier, began to fuss and then to wiggle and squirm, confused by the chaos. And Arcee sat herself down on a bench with the child in her lap, barely hearing either of the boys as she struggled to think a moment. Idly, she bounced the youngling a little on her knees until her fussing finally gave way to giggles and a tiny smile.

"What are we gonna do with him?" Jack asked, suddenly. The question pulled Arcee's attention slightly away from her child and to the human that now sat beside her on the bench. With his eyes and a subtle motion of one hand, she saw him gesture toward the lone vehicon trooper, who was standing in the center of the room, turning his head slowly to look around him. Quite clearly the bot was overwhelmed and near a state of utter shock at his own circumstances. "What's the deal with him anyway? Arcee… why would you bring a 'con trooper back here?"

"He's not going to be punished and taken prisoner like Starscream, is he?" Miko questioned then, from her place, now sitting up just fine on Knockout's right armrest, with her knees bent in front of her. Her eyes grew wide and she said in determination, "he saved Knockout's life, and probably Wheeljack's too."

"He willingly defected," Arcee answered, explaining. She shook her head just slightly, still struggling just a bit to get her bearings, with so much to think of at once. "And he was immediately off to a good start at proving whose side he might really want to be on." She chuckled slightly under her intakes, not because it was exactly suitable a time to do so, but because of the very strangeness of the situation, and how she still so recently might never have imaged it as possible. "He will join a fast growing number of willing defectors in need of Autobot assistance if they are really going to have a chance at starting over."

Arcee had barely given even a thought to the poor shocked trooper, who had indeed saved more than one Autobot tailpipe that day, until Jack had thought to question his presence inside the base in the first place. And she looked right at him now, turning with the youngling still in her lap, so that she could look him over far more carefully. The vehicon was dented and scuffed, bleeding energon from clearly minor tears in his frame. But mostly he appeared close to the point of fuel depletion, so clearly exhausted and holding himself up in a standing position was obvious trouble continuing to do so. Turning quickly to Speedbreaker, who stood close by, with a shocked and baffled expression of her own, across her faceplate, she quickly handed her the baby as soon as she had jumped to her feet. With that, Arcee hurried across the room, fetched a filled energon container from a storage cupboard below the dispenser, and walked quickly to offer it to the still baffled trooper.

"Thank you," the vehicon said, quietly and obviously hesitant. But he took the container and drank from it, before Arcee led him by the arm toward a bench against the side wall and shoved him gently down to sit on it.

"So," she said. She made a point of smiling a little and keeping the tone of voice almost friendly. "You got a name?"

"Vehicon J-563-NR-6," the trooper replied, still hesitant, but quicker to speak this time.

"So, J-5 for short then?" Raf muttered grinning, and Speedbreaker still holding Cybershock chuckled in agreement.

"Most of the troopers who have already defected, have chosen new names for themselves," 'Bee explained with a laugh of his own. "Real names for the first time in their lives. That's far better than calling each one by just letters and numbers."

"I.. I have never thought about..." the trooper started to say when both bots and humans alike all turned to look in his direction. But he didn't finish the thought out loud, and instead simply finished drinking from the container he'd been handed.

"Quickshot," Miko suggested, her voice excited as she looked in the vehicon's direction and grinned. "You're pretty quick your blaster. I mean come on. You're the one bot that finally managed to take down Starscream in his jet mode!"

"I like it," the trooper said after a moment in which he appeared to consider while looking at the floor.

"So," Jack mumbled thoughtfully. Still sitting close to Arcee and the child she held on her lap, he reached out, smiling to gently touch the armor plating on the baby's little sliver foot. Cybershock giggled and kicked and promptly she reached to grab him curiously. "What happens next?"

Looking around the room at gathered bots and humans, Arcee considered the question silently a moment. But there was so much to think about at once. Almost too many. Wheeljack would live. Ratchet would see to that, though the repairs would surely take much of the night, and it seemed a blaster beam had missed his spark by only millimeters. The old medic would no doubt want to look over Miko as soon as he could, though Knockout had already done so quickly, declared her most probably fine, and there was so little they could have done for her themselves in any case. But still medics were medics and no doubt he would do his best just as Knockout had, much to Miko's protests. There was the trooper; Quickshot. He was still in need of housing, however temporary, somewhere on base. Arcee made up her mind to solve that problem first since it was indeed a simple one – the housing of defectors was nothing new to the base lately. And she decided then and there on an empty room she would show him to later. He would need be shown to the medbay at some point too. Then there was Starscream, confined in the brig – still, at least the last she had been told – laying exactly where Bulk' had thrown him, in the furthest corner of the furthest of the cells. He would need to be interrogated after his own repairs were complete. Arcee had to admit she had no real idea of what to do with him, now that he had finally been captured. And she wondered almost in passing, if perhaps she ought to be worried about the fact that the bot was clearly badly damaged.

"We'll figure it out as we go," Arcee answered slowly. And he gave a little chuckle, which her youngling quickly mimicked for no clear reason at all. "Just like Autobots have always done."

"The war is really over then?" Raf asked from his place, sitting on Bumblebee's shoulder. "Little really totally over completely for good?"

"The war officially ended today," Arcee confirmed. And as much as she tried to say so in a serious and no nonsense tone, as she knew a few other great Autobot commanders she could name might have done, she instead found herself grinning suddenly, and laughing, and couldn't help it.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"You sure you're up to this, right now?" Bulkhead questioned slowly, as the lift doors slid closed. He tapped a huge hand against the 'down' button, and turned his head slightly to the right.

"I'm good Bulk'" Arcee answered quickly. Almost too quickly. And she glared at him with optics full of stubborn determination. A second later though she sighed, and moved slightly as thought she was going to learn against the wall of the lift. But she didn't. "In all honesty, no. No I'm not up to this right now. I'm in a pretty slagging good mood tonight. As I we've all got the right to be, considering the war is really over. And just the thought of dealing with Starscream right now, is about to ruin it for me. But someone's gotta deal with him eventually. We can't just leave him to rust."

"Ya sure about that?" Bulkhead remarked, as the lift came to a stop on the lower level.

"Don't we both just wish." Arcee chuckled under her intakes and shook her head, mildly amused, as the doors slid open.

Starscream was sitting, slumped forward on the metal bench at that far side of his cell and scowling with rage when Arcee peered in Plexiglas window near the top of the cell door. The Autobot motioned silently for her teammate to follow behind her, and she dared then to walk right in to the cell without a word about it. Starscream raised his head just enough to glare with rage at both of them, but she stayed where he was, close to the wall and seated.

"Look alive, Screamer," Arcee demanded, forcing her voice into a tone that almost too friendly on purpose behind her obvious sarcasm. "I think its time we had a chat."

Starscream only glared at both her and Bulkhead, and said not a word. And Arcee, though she knew full well that her enemy prisoner's weapons had surely been disabled as soon as he had been hauled in, stood at the ready to activate her own blasters anyway on a second's notice if anything were to go very wrong.

"You stand accused of war crimes and of crimes against Cybertron and its people," she said seriously, daring to return his terrible glare, while inwardly she cringed fought back the urge to back away closer to the door as it shut behind her.

"Not to mention what you did to Miko," Bulkhead added quickly. He stepped forward to stand next to Arcee with his hands forming fists. And the look on his faceplate did nothing to hide his desire to punch the 'con commander clear into unconsciousness. "Stupid move, Screamy. Stupid, stupid move."

"I've got rights, Autobots," Starscream mumbled at them. But still he did not move and his optics only kept right on glaring at them both.

Arcee was about to snap at him, to threaten him with force if he did not comply at once with the demand she was about to make that he shut his mouth. But she knew he was right. He still suffered unrepaired damages, and had not yet even been seen by a medic. He was in need of fuel and none had been so much as offered. This was the first time he was officially even hearing his changes.

"Ratchet will be in to see you as soon as he can," Arcee explained, with slightly more patience then she had felt seconds before. "And I'll call someone to bring you fuel as soon as we've finished talking."

"I'll never beg you for my life, Autobot," Starscream said, glaring. "I'll face execution if I must for your ideals and your ridiculous democratic rule of new Cybertron. But I will never ever beg you for a thing."

"Execution was never exactly on the table," Arcee answered seriously. "Capital punishment never was the Autobot way exactly."

Sighing out loud and resisting the growing urge to walk away, slamming the door in frustration, Arcee took a moment to collect herself before she pulled a data pad from her storage compartment. She tossed it, quite unceremoniously onto the metal bench, where it landed face up. Starscream appeared to hesitate a second before he reached to quickly snatch up the pad. And powering it up with a quick touch of his fingertip, he stared a moment at the screen, first frowning and then scowling.

"It's a blank pad," he exclaimed, glaring again with narrowed optics. "What is it you expect me to do with a..."

"Write a confession. Write an appeal. Anything you want to share with us and a jury chosen from among the refugees, that may just help your case," Arcee said pointedly. She retrieved a pen from her compartment, and offered it to him, while still struggling strangely hard to keep her temper in check. "Or I suppose, I could bring you a keypad interface, if you prefer to type on there."

Starscream roughly snatched the pen from between her fingers, but at nearly the same second he grabbed it, the pad he still held flew from his other hand and hit the floor of the cell with a little thump before it slid a ways toward Bulkhead's big green feet. On her guard at once, Arcee snatched the pad from the floor with optics never leaving a prisoner she suspected at once may just have been trying some trick or other.

"Knock it off, Starscream," she said, with threat clear in the tone of her own voice. She held the pad, unsure now if she should return it to him then or not.

"You think I did that on purpose, Autobot?" Starscream answered, in a voice suddenly close to yelling loudly. The low menacing tone he'd spoken with until then was gone entirely, and instead he sounded strangely almost afraid of what he had done.

"Of course I think you did," Arcee snapped at once. She topped herself before she could go any further, and she shook her head a little. She was missing something, and she knew it. But she could not place it and she couldn't afford to stand still and reason it out right then, while she stood inside a cell with a bot she knew full well was dangerous enough to kill both her and Bulk in seconds if she stopped paying him her full attention.

"We'll be back to bring you fuel," she said, matter of fact, and backing toward the door. "Ratchet will be here sometime tonight to see you. I need whatever it is you are going to write, written and signed in two days."

Arcee slammed the cell door to lock it once more just as soon she she had stepped out of there with Bulkhead right behind her. And as soon as the door was closed and locked behind her, she turned to stomp off down the corridor with clenched fists and optics that burned with anger.

"Hey, you alright?" Bulk' questioned, as she hurried after her and just as soon as he had managed to actually catch up, right before they had come to the lift. And Arcee only glared at him for a second, reflecting in dismay on the ridiculousness of his asking such a thing when he could see that so clearly she was not exactly fine.

"I don't think I've ever hated a anybot as much as I hate that one, Bulk'" she answered honestly, after a moment spent simply calming down enough to see that her teammate was hardly at fault for her anger. With fists still clenched tight and optics glaring at the closed lift doors, she felt her entire frame tense with her frustration. "I think I hate Starscream far more than I hated Megatron. And that's gotta be saying something. I can't believe that stuck up, spoiled coward had the nerve to throw that datapad at me..." Arcee shook her head for the second time in minutes and conctined to stare at the lift doors, only to avoid letting her teammate see the upset she knew had suddenly overtaken her face-plate. Suddenly far more miserble and confused than actually angry anymore she mumbled under intakes, "I can't believe I'm upset because Starscream threw a datapad at me, of all things… Didn't do it on purpose? Slagging lying tinhead!" Angry again, Arcee punched the closed doors with enough force to leave a small dent, and enough of a bang that Bulkhead was obviously shocked and startled by it.

"I dunno," Bulkhead mused. Quickly he'd bushed off his dismay at Arcee's outburst, and he took a step closer to her, while reaching with one hand to gently steer her onto the lift as its doors slid open. When she looked up at him, waiting to hear more, he went on quickly. "Arcee, I'm not sure he actually did that on purpose."

"You really think…?"

"It looked to me like flew right from his hand, like he'd lost the ability to hold onto it for a second. Arcee, when we were out there on the battlefield yesterday, Starscream managed to nearly hit the rocks while flying… twice."

"Ha," Arcee scoffed. Suddenly she found herself resisting a strange urge to laugh. "Well, serves him fragging right. He was probably showing off instead of watching where he was going!"

"I dunno… centuries of fightin' and we've never seen him make a mistake. Not in the air. He's one of the best fliers cybertron's ever seen. Now I'm not sayin' it oughta matter much. I hope to see the bot rust in prison as much as anyone. But we can't fault him for throwing that pad."

"Fine. We already have enough on him to keep him locked up for life. And scrap do I ever wish I could throw that key into a smelting pit. I suppose we had better send Ratchet a memo about the whole nearly scraping himself on the rocks thing..."

"Already done it."

"I still hate him. Whatever might be the matter with him."

"I know," Bulk' nodded his understanding. "And I share your feelings on that more than ever since he decided it was a good idea to go and grab Miko..."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Sitting alone inside his office, behind the medbay, Ratchet finished drinking the last of his morning container of energon, while he scrolled idly through a datapad containing a medical text book. It seemed to him a lovely day to open a window, and he took a moment away from his reading in order to stand up and open the one above his desk. Outside the window, a pair of bots, no longer quite younglings obviously, but not exactly adults either, and both apparently having hopped the high fence that surrounded the base, walked a fast shortcut across the courtyard. They stopped somewhere I the middle of the yard in order to good around together, kicking around a hunk of metal over the ground. And Ratchet, sure he ought to run them both off with a shout out the window, only stood watching in surprising amusement over the whole thing. They were, he decided, just harmless kids. And refugee neutrals. They were most certainly trespassing. But it wasn't exactly hurting anything.

"Ratchet," Bumblebee's voice said somewhere behind him, and the old bot turned to see his young teammate in the doorway, a data pad of his own under his arm and a bemused look on his faceplate. He had to have been standing in the doorway for a minute of two, and Ratchet shook his head a little when he realized he had never even heard the door slid open, let along the footsteps behind it, in the midst of his daydreaming.

"Come on in here, 'Bee," Ratchet invited with a wave on a hand toward an extra chair that sat in the far corner of the small cramped office. He chuckled to himself, watching as the younger bot reached immediately into the dish of energon sweets in bright foil wrappers, that occupied a place on the corner of the desk, and carefully opened one as he sat down on the chair.

"Are you alright," the young bot questioned slowly. "You looked… distracted again."

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Ratchet mumbled, as he moved to sit back down in his chair after reaching into the dish of sweets himself. "I've been thinking, perhaps it's time we tore down that surrounding fence. Hospitals don't exactly need such security, and the refugees are already just climbing on over it anyway sense we've disarmed it. That's a lot of metal, better used for building."

'Bee nodded with a smile of agreement over that, and gestured with his optics toward the pad he'd brought with him and which now lay on his knees.

"I finished the material you asked me to read over," He said with clear hesitation. "Processor Circuitry Rapid Degradation Syndrome… I must say I was surprised when you asked me to research an actually medical disorder already, but I tried. I'll be honest, Ratchet. I couldn't find much of anything on the disorder to read and learn from. A few pages in this text book, plus a line of two here and there in only a couple others..."

"That is, unfortunately, all there is to be found now," Ratchet mused with a saddened shake of his head. "You may well have found a bit more, perhaps even a couple of whole, if not short, chapters on the condition, along the texts in the medical section of the hall of records, before the place was destroyed by the war. Still even then that would have been it, and you'd know next to nothing just from reading..."

He was interrupted in the middle of his sentence, by the sound of the door, as it slid open again on its track. And he turned to the door a little in his chair, to see Knockout, sitting in the doorway on his cart, with Cybershock happily grinning at something only she likely understood such amusement in, on his lap. Knockout held her against him with his right arm while she wiggled and lightly kicked her tiny legs, still grinning.

Ratchet, taking a moment to grin right back at the little one stood back up and stepped over the quickly lift her up from her creator's lap and into his arms, where she settled quickly, still grinning at him.

"The condition is, unfortunately, one a medic tends to learn when he's forced into a crash course by coming across it in his work," Ratchet continued on, seriously against while holding the baby, and addressing 'Bee, while he gestured at the other of his teammates park himself in the other empty corner – which, in the cramped space had always seemed to be the only corner in which he could turn himself around to face forward. And he gestured vaguely in his direction as his damaged teammate, did sure enough turn to face the others after he'd maneuvered around past a shelving unit and the desk. "I wonder if Knockout here has ever even seen the condition before."

If any doubt had remained in Ratchet's mind, as to just how much a lifetime of medical programming, and a passion for his chosen field of work, had stayed functioning in the processor of a now very damaged bot, the look of curiosity and interested need to know at once, that he saw on Knockout's face-plate, would have crushed all of such doubts in a second.

"Processor Circuitry Rapid Degradation Syndrome," he explained, catching his teammate up on the conversation he had missed, and allowing a moment for him to shift through his own base of knowledge.

"Um.. once," Knockout answered, hesitant and thinking hard about the matter. "I was left once by my instructor, to diagnose a bot, a patient of his, suffering from what turned out to be the second stage of the condition, back in the final few years of my academy days."

"From the little was able to find to read up on the condition, it seems it would have to be a terrible disorder," 'Bee commented. "Fatal in the end I can only assume..."

"Not necessarily," Ratchet answered back. He found himself falling at once right back into teaching mode. And he almost smiled a little at finding that the more he taught the young bot the more he remembered how he had missed teaching. "If we catch it early enough to the third – and usually final stage – treatment is often still an option. Though the chances of patient survival do decrease dramatically if caught that late."

"My instructor's patient lived," Knockout added. "Granted, she was only in the second stage. But still I do believe that even later she would have still had a fair enough chance."

"PCRDS is slow to progress at first. And the symptoms are vague, minor and easy to let go unnoticed. Ratchet answered seriously. He shook his head, and went on. "It's also, unfortunately, a terribly frustrating thing to deal with from a medical perspective. The earliest symptoms, are usually behavior related mostly. Increasingly poor judgment calls, a growing tendency to ramble, while losing track of one's stream of thought… things like that are easily symptoms for twenty different and far more common problems. And a good handful of those are not even medical at all."

"I think I'd just assume a bot like that was crazy," 'Bee commented, he laughed slightly, but his laugh was clearly a nervous one by then, and he looked down down at the datapad, serious again at once and paying attention.

"Many would," Ratchet explained. Still supporting the weight of Cybershock's small body on one arm, he reached out with one pointing finger and waved it a little with emphasis meant to make his point. "But. This is where it's so important to never cling to the simplest assumption as correct as any cost. In this particular condition, yes, it would likely look at first like you you've got a crazy bot on your hands. Maybe he's had a bad year and the stress is taking its toll. Perhaps he's just angry lately because why not, and in his mind it's perfectly okay to behave that way. He's certainly not sick. He's just a bot with a bad attitude. Or perhaps he's got a had too much too drink. Maybe that happens far too often in his case. But then things unexpectedly get worse. The bot's basic coordination goes sideways. Anything he's not dropping he's knocking over. He has more and more trouble walking in his bot mode, and in his alt mode, he cant seem to drive or fly in a straight line. He's all over the road, or he's all but falling right out of the sky. If he's a fighter armed with weapons systems, his targeting is gone entirely. And he's hitting everything but the thing he means to hit. And if he's not, then still so much can go wrong in any systems that just let him live a day to day life safely. He's now well into stage two, and fast. That's where the 'rapid' in its name comes from. And because it is indeed so rare a condition, it would never occur to you to consider it soon enough, if you were not at the top of your game and paying attention to details."

"You picked this condition, of any of them, to teach me for a reason," Bumblebee said, in obvious realization. He looked at at the old bot, with confusion on his face-plate, trying apparently hard, to figure it all out. Ratchet watched 'Bee exchange looks once with Knockout across the office, and the damaged defector only returned his baffled look, obviously clueless himself.

"Starscream," Ratchet said sighing. He finally sat back down in his chair behind his desk, and shifted the baby around in his arms so that she could sit semi-upright in his lap. "There was a little note sent to me about how he may have nearly crashed into the cliffs twice while in battle against our team, got my attention. Then Arcee called me mad as a scraplet, saying something about a thrown datapad last night. You see now where its important to pay attention to anything, that may seem so tiny and not so out of place at all..."

"The day we took him down..." Knockout mused, shaking his head now in his own obvious realization. "He was acting so strangely. Yeah, he's always been a crazy one. Loud. Obnoxious… But that was weird even by Starscream standards. The endless ranting on and on, and not making any real sense… screaming in rage…"

"I've heard all about that from the bots that where there," Bumblebee said. "Me and Smokescreen had a laugh about it all. I just assumed he'd gone and lost what little of his mind he haven't lost already. Now, you're saying Starscream could have a serious medical condition?"

"I'm certain of it."

"He's treatable though," 'Bee said. His tone revealed just how little how little he knew he was even supposed to feel about the unexpected situation. "Isn't he? Anything late into stage two, and early into stage three…"

"When I say the final stages are rapid in progression I mean exactly what I say," Ratchet shook his head, allowing himself to feel his own confused emotions about it all. "He was brought here only three days ago, and obviously well into stage two already, in hindsight. I saw him this morning again. Third stage is now so apparent its impossible to mistake for anything but medically serious now. I could still save him. Or at least I believe I could. I'd give him perhaps a seventy percent chance. And that's not bad. But he's refusing treatment."

"Can he… can he do that?" 'Bee questioned, uncertain and still shaking his head, while he and Knockout exchanged glances again.

"Even as a prisoner of war, he's still got rights," Ratchet explained. He bounced the youngling on his lap slightly, when she began to fuss a little. She settled at once and even smiled, oblivious to the seriousness of the conversation in the room. "Any bot can refuse treatment. Even though we'd so obviously like it is they didn't. As for the state of his processor and his ability to be allowed to make that call himself, well sure. His systems may be failing, processor included. But that doesn't mean he can't still think, can't still reason and make a medical decision."

"So… what do we do with him…?" Bumblebee looked to Ratchet for an answer, and in his optics the old bot could so clearly see his confusion and dismay. He knew full well that he'd thrown his young teammate into situation of complicated life and death ethics, and it was soon to get far worse than simply that. He knew just as well that it was so early in the young bot's training to have done that. But given the circumstances, he saw little choice but to simply throw him right in anyway.

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Arcee was quiet that night, sitting on the familiar clifftop, leaning against the side of her bondmate's mobility cart. She held Cybershock, half way to recharge, comfortable on her folded knees, and looked out over the cliff as the sun began to set over the city below.

"What are you thinking about?" Knockout asked, after slightly too long had passed in her silence. He reached with his right arm, so that he could put his hand over her shoulder panel. And slowly, distracted, she moved to look up at him without jostling the baby.

"Almost every one of the Autobots hated Starscream," Arcee said. ""We couldn't wait to see that fool finally fall. An end to the war. And end to all the wondering what it was he was up to, somewhere off….plotting. I didn't think in a thousand years it would end like _this."_

"He'll never stand trial," Knockout mused. And he shook his head over the fact. "He won't live long enough to."

"True. But it's more than that I think. I wanted to see him sentenced. I hoped the elected jury would make him pay for wanting continued war when all anyone else ever wanted now was peace. But still… I guess I never imagined he would just die one day."

"Me neither."

"You two served on the same side once. Yeah, things did get bad and I know. Starscream was your fiend once. Before you became the target of his growing rage, and he tried to kill you once, obviously. It's gotta be a bit different for that it is for me, or really any of us..."

"I don't know. I tend to think my opinion is more 'Autobot' than you would think. A strange confusing mix of 'still sad, no matter who it is' and 'good riddance.' For me though there's still the medical programming… that hope that there might still be some way to save him..."

"Have you talked to him…?"

"No," Knockout shook his head and then stared off into the distance for a moment. "I felt today like maybe I should… but he tried to execute me for defection..."

Cybershock, sleepy a moment ago and dropping into recharge, was suddenly wide awake and looking around with wide-optic'd curiosity, while she waved her arms and kicked her little legs, and smiling, babbling. Carefully, holding her against her frame, so as not to loose her grip on her, Arcee stood up with the child in her arms and turned so that she could hand the baby off to her mate. Then slowly she turned further, looking away from the cliff's edge and watching the three human children, a fair ways down the pathway, all busy inspecting small metallic rocks. Seeing her turn around beside him, Knockout turned the cart slowly while holding the baby, and faced the path himself.

"The humans really find rocks that amusing?" Knockout questioned, with a laugh and a shake of his head.

"Well Cybertronian rocks yes," Arcee chuckled back. She took a step backward so that she could lean lightly against the armrest of the cart. "Really, what human wouldn't want to bring home rocks from an alien planet?"

She stood, silent again for a while, watching the tiny youngling as she fell into recharge, laying on her creator's lap. He'd shifted his position a little, so that she lay flat, sprawled over his upper legs, with her head against his frame and the support for the cart's left armrest. Arcee chuckled a little, as she wondered how the little bot could possibly be comfortable, recharging in such a position. But obviously she was. The bots turned out their front facing headlights, on their front panels, and down the path, the human's began to use a couple of bright flashlights they'd brought with them.

"I might just have killed you for your recent little act of of Autobot heroics, if she didn't love you quite so much," Arcee told her mate, mostly joking, as she watched their tired youngling.

"And thank you, by the way, for deciding to spare me," Knockout answered, laughing only slightly himself.

"In all seriousness..." Arcee said, optics that reflected just that, but a hint of a smile still on her face-plate. She looked again in the direction of the young humans, all three of them sitting and kneeling on and near the path. They picked up and inspected the smaller loose bits of metallic rock and crystal scattered over the ground. Most they would toss back again, but a few they placed carefully into the pockets of their clothing, obviously intent on keeping them. "It was a great and heroic thing you did… if not just a little bit beyond insane."

"Do they know anything yet, about…?" Knockout started to ask, changing the subject. He looked toward the young humans himself, but he never did finish the question.

"About the situation with Starscream?" Arcee said, finishing the question for him, when he could not quite manage to do so. She nodded slowly. "The reactions were varied, as you would imagine. Raf wasn't sure exactly if he was he was supposed to think the news is bad news or not. Jack is… well Jack. He got the idea once that he should hate the 'cons probably more than any Autobot ever did. He says he'll be glad to see him gone, and that was pretty much that. Miko was the strange one yet again. Reasoned and hoped that perhaps he only went as far as he did to nab and kill her because his illness made him prone of such behavior. She actually wanted to visit him. I told her not a chance."

"Miko once talked to me, only because someone told her 'no'" Knockout reminded her, with an odd mix of laughter and concern on his face-plate.

Arcee laughed a little at him for that comment. But quickly her face-plate turned serious again, as she questioned in a contemplating tone, "so what do we do in the case of rapidly failing terminally ill bot, anyway?" She knew her question may just have been almost a bit of a strange one. She was the one known for knowing exactly how to handle situations. And even when she didn't, she could fake it just fine. But such a situation was not one she ever encountered before. She sighed and leaned lightly against her mate, letting him support a potion of her weight, as she knew he could certainly do. "It just gets even more tricky and complicated when that bot is one of the most dangerous bots on Cybertron, and is a prisoner."

"Ratchet would like to move him out of the brig, and into the medbay, preferably tomorrow. He and I discussed the matter today. He wanted my opinion… Starscream may have done a few too many terrible things in his life, but he's still a bot. Still a fellow Cybertronian. And he's not the only one to ever go so bad. The war changed everybot."

"Some days I hate it when you're right."

Arcee sat down comfortably on the ground then, and looked up at her mate, with conflict in her bright blue optics. Slowly she went on speaking, her tone serious again. "Ratchet explained to me today that this condition, PCRGS, or something like that, is usually triggered by repeated hard blows to the head and upper frame in bots already carrying a usually dormant code for it…"

"PCRDS," Knockout corrected her slight mistake. Then he leaned forward a little and nodded slightly. "There can be other triggers in rare cases, but yeah…"

Arcee sat for a while on the ground, quiet and just watching the humans on the path collecting rocks, and her youngling, in recharge on Knockout's lap. For many long moments she just thought her thoughts saying nothing. But slowly the humans drifted away from their collecting and standing up, they just ideally chatted themselves. And Arcee stood up again herself, looking down the path in the grow of her headlight.

"It's late," she said. "We should all be getting back to base."


	41. Chapter 41

Bumblebee had never been a strong and angry hand to hand fighter in battle. He most certainly could punch and kick if he had to, and more than once he had managed to inflict a decent bit of damage that way. But still, he had always relied mostly on his skill with a blaster and the speed of his vehicle mode on the battlefield. Arcee was therefore taken aback, when she wandered into the training gym early in the evening, to find him beating on a hanging punching bag with a kind of clear furry that would almost have rivaled Bulkhead's style and skill.

"Are you trying to put the wreckers to shame, 'Bee?" Arcee questioned with a laugh, as she crossed the room and approached him perhaps a little too slowly. Watching him while he kept right on going, she had to admit to herself that he was much better than she had thought to notice before. Then again, he'd always been stealth and speed and quick thinking, and no bot, it seemed had ever truly thought to encourage his training in heavy hand to hand combat.

"I'd suggest you challenge Bulk' to a training match," Arcee said after she'd watched him for another long moment. "But I'd be worried today about him getting hurt!" She laughed a little again, but all the same, she was almost serious.

"I'm just… blowing off a little steam," 'Bee mumbled. And finally, he stopped the swinging punching bag with one hand, before he turned toward his teammate. He smiled slightly in her direction, but the expression was far from genuine, and his optics showed little more than stress and something close to despair.

"I'm not doing much if you wanna talk to me," Arcee said. She stepped backward toward a bench along the side wall and let herself flop back onto it in a seated position. "Knockout has Cybershock. If I know him, there's no way I'm getting her back from him now, if I wanted to, barring some catastrophe of course." She laughed a little and shook her head, amused. But quickly her face-plate turned serious again and she gestured with her optics toward the bench she was already sitting on.

"Starscream," 'Bee mumbled quietly and staring almost at the floor as he did. It looked for a second like he was going to say something more. But he didn't. And Arcee's optics opened wide while her hands clenched against her will into fists, at the mention of an enemy's name.

"Did he say something, 'Bee?" Arcee growled in suddenly frustration, trying her best to look her teammate in the optics and to make him look back. "Did he hurt anyone? I swear to Primus, if that bot's done anything, I'll scrap him, and I don't care how close he is to dying..."

Arcee," 'Bee said, his tone strangely firm and dragging her at once from her angry thoughts. Only then did she realize just how badly she had been ranting. "Starscream didn't say anything or hurt anyone." His optics met Arcee's again. His bright optics were opened wider by then and she could see the kid was strangely horrified. "He couldn't hurt anyone if he wanted to. He barely knows who we are most of the time. I don't think he always knows who he is. Ratchet said this morning he's already well into the third stage now. And his condition is progressing so fast. I… I thought once that Knockout's crash was the worst thing I'd ever see." The young bot looked up again, his optics finally meeting Arcee's, before he punched the bag hard enough to get it rocking back and forth again roughly. And when he spoke again, his voice was shaky. "A bot dying from PCRDS…. That's so much worse than even that. One system after another is failing, never to fully work again. And every time the next thing goes, there's a new intervention. But he's been so entirely not with it the last couple of days and hates the machines…. Screams at nothing sometimes for an hour at a time, before he just smiles a genuine sleepy grin… like a youngling Cybershock's age or something. Sometimes he's babbling almost entirely nonsense. Today his intake system started to fail, he was shrieking and screaming like he thought we were going to kill him as soon as a spark monitor went off. Finally, his cooling system glitched and his frame overheated… a line somewhere burst from processor pressure and we found energon pouring everywhere..."

Bumblebee's words died in the air, and he abruptly punched the still lightly swinging punching bag several times almost harder than he had before. Arcee, shocked and startled, got up slowly from the bench. And cautiously she wandered much closer to her teammate again. For a second or two, she almost spoke at least a couple of times. But each time she quickly gave up, when she realized she had no idea what it was she wanted to say about any of it. Eventually, she settled for silently getting in a few good hits to the bag herself, before she steadied it to stop its wild swinging when 'Bee stopped and took a few idle steps backward.

"I've thought more than once I was going to lose my morning fuel at times in training. But this was the first time I finally did. I barely made it out the door and to a waste disposal… and of course, I felt like such an idiot for that…" the youngest of the Autobots mumbled. He stared at the floor now. "I went to the showers and I caught myself thinking about how much I hope Starscream is offline soon. And not because he's the dreaded enemy we all want to be rid of. It's impossible to think that's even the case anymore."

"I don't think anyone holds anything against you," Arcee said, hopelessly guessing that that might just be at least the slightest bit useful a thing to say.

"I know that," Bumblebee answered. He looked up again and smiled slightly, however uncertain of a smile it may have been, and he nodded a little. "But still I doubt myself, and maybe too much at times. There's so much to remember. Did you know there are at least thirty-four tiny parts to the average Cybertronain hand? Fourteen joints in most feet? There are so many viruses and their common systems to keep straight. I try to cram all that information into my processor and every day I think I'm getting it. But then Ratchet quizzes me on anything everything every day when I report for duty in the medbay, and I realize I've forgotten half of what I just learned..." He sighed once and stood quietly for a moment before he lowered his head again to look back down at the floor, while he mumbled under his intakes. "I'm not sure I'm designed for this..."

"It will get better," Arcee smiled her assurance. "Life usually does."

She would have found her own simple advice both ridiculous and entirely useless, not so long ago. But life itself had managed somehow more than once in recent times, to prove her cynicism wrong.

"More than once, Starscream's mumbled something or other about some bot called Skywarp," bumblebee mused, changing the subject and looking as though he clearly figured it may have been important information. But he shrugged slightly at the same time and looked confused. "Does that name mean anything to you?"

"Skywarp fight for the 'cons once, probably before you were even enlisted," Arcee answered, thinking a second. "Oooh, that bot was impossible to deal with. Made our lives the living pit. That's for sure. Until you've tried to fight a teleporter in battle with no clue which direction to be looking in at any second..." She paused a moment, thinking before she continued on slower and with far more compassion. "No one was ever sure exactly. But most of us were pretty sure Skywarp was Starscream's brother..."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Late on the day following Starscream's capture, a small group of Autobots had managed with no trouble at all, to recapture the Nemesis; which had been located, landed and nearly empty of troops, high in the mountains near Cybertron's southern pole. Of the four vehicon troopers found aboard – the last remaining bots of a crew that had once numbered into the hundreds – all four had willingly defected with only minutes of convincing. And these four troopers, along with Quickshot – who had played a large part in locating the warship in the first place- had been more than helpful to the Autobots in stripping the ship of anything and everything that might possibly have been useful.

And now a couple of days later, Soundwave had been busy much of the morning, working in a once mostly unused and empty room at the end of a hallway on the lower level of the base, with a salvaged computer mainframe that he'd taken on the job of reprogramming and installing. He knew already of Ratchet's plans to convert the base into a soon to be well functioning medical center. And the old medibot had been clearly surprised and impressed when Soundwave had suggested that the warship's navigation computer could be converted, with a few modifications, into a working solution for storage of at least a few thousand separate patient files in their digital formats. Ratchet had made no secret of even greater surprise when Soundwave had volunteered his time and skill to the job of setting up the system.

He had been on the floor for long enough to have lost any track of time, with endlessness lengths of wiring wrapped neatly around his arm while he nearly rewired the system from beneath it. And though the position he was working in was certainly an awkward one, and made worse by a need to hold the coiled wire and therefore work mostly one-handed with tools that he'd been forced to leave barely in his reach, he did not find the work itself to be at all unenjoyable. Working that way, in awkward positions under and behind a huge computer, was hardly new to him. And with Laserbeak, working close by, her small body wedged easily into the tight space above him, well out of reach of his hands, and diligently transmitting visual maps to the circuit board to him, he found himself back within the familiarity of a life he knew well.

Once, he made his way carefully out from underneath the computer, so that he could stand up and power up the system with a few simple button pushes on a keyboard tossed onto the worktable. He entered a few fast and simple commands before he shut it down again, and promptly made his way back into his place on the floor, to resume the work with the wiring again. And quickly he was once again caught up in his work, with time passing happily without his noticing it.

It was a strangely quiet and steady tapping sound, that finally pulled his attention away from his work sometime later. And he realized he'd been hearing the sound for a while already before it registered consciously in his processor and he understood that he was hearing it at all. And with a feeling of strange unease brought on by centuries on near constant high alert for anything out of place, he quickly made his way back out from underneath the computer again.

Soundwave had no idea at all what it was he might have expected to find nearby, and making that sound. But a small human, dressed in simple blue jeans and a clearly far too big hooded sweatshirt, and with crossed legs on the floor and fingers tapping on the keys of a red laptop, was certainly the last thing he would have expected.

"Uh… hi," the young human – the youngest of the three young 'friends of the Autobots' - said, with something that may well have been some degree of hesitation. The human stared for a moment right at the bot before he looked around the room, clearly growing anxious by then. But he did not get up from the floor, and after a moment he spoke again. "I hope I'm not bothering you."

"Ratchet says you've been down here most of the morning working on that project of yours," the human nodded toward the computer and to a decent amount of wire that lay on the floor in a tidy coil beside it. "Medical file storage… for the hospital. It's pretty cool of you to do that."

Soundwave moved slightly, ready to move back into his cramped yet somehow comfortably position under the huge computer system so that he could simply resume his work and ignore the boy. But then he stopped again and stayed where he was, kneeling on the floor of the nearly empty room. The human intrigued him somehow and he paused, curious to see if he would say any anything else.

The boy didn't speak again though and instead his attention seemed to go right back to the laptop he balanced on his bent knees. Soundwave felt then like surely he should either get back to the work he'd put off a moment too long by then or get to his feet and walk away from it entirely for a while, leaving the human to whatever it was he was doing. The base was after all probably just as much the humans' as it was the Autobots', and he himself still felt very much like simply a guest there. But he never could manage to ignore his passion for anything relating in any way to computer technology, and the small human's little computer, however primitive it may have been by his standards had caught his interest. It was in fact, he understood quickly, perhaps the very fact that it was indeed so entirely primitive a machine, that had him so interested in the first place. And still, on his knees, he leaned over, so that he could get closer and inspect the human's machine carefully.

"This isn't the best computer in the world," the boy said, explaining. "I've upgraded everything I could on it. Still it's quite underpowered, and even a little glitchy. But one of my little sisters dropped my old one, my good one, last month and of course, she broke it. This one's good enough for now."

Soundwave, as usual, opted to say not a word. But still, in his place on the and leaning to the side, he studied the tiny screen of the laptop. And he stared with confusion through his face-shield, at a flat square made up of many smaller squares in alternating black and white, and at a series of assorted icons which the computer had seemingly placed in some logical order on top of the squares. He watched the boy, as he used the touchpad below the computer's keyboard, and seemingly he moved an icon on the screen that way.

"It's a digital chess program," the boy explained, quickly answering the question that Soundwave, in his silence had had no way of asking. The small human gave a motion of shrugging his shoulder once and then he muttered quickly. There are better ones these days. Three dimensional and far better graphics. But I like this one. Ha, I guess I just like retro."

Soundwave certainly did not play games. And watching the boy play, as he quickly understood it, against his own computer itself, he understood that it was indeed simply a game he was playing and probably for the simple enjoyment of it. On board the warship, during hours of 'down time' many of his crew-mates, anywhere from vehicon troopers to many far higher up in the ranks, were well known to enjoy a casual game of some kind or other. It was never exactly against the rules, as long as they were indeed off duty, and Soundwave had never bothered anyone about it. But he had never partaken in the activity either. It simply held no interest to him. Watching the young human play though, he began to quickly understand the basics of the game. He saw the need for some degree of skill and logic, some need for at least a decent degree of intelligence and possibly even foresight.

"I… I could probably teach you to play..." the boy offered however hesitantly.

A gesture of friendship was the very last thing he would expect from anyone, and this tiny human least of all still. It left him baffled and uneasy. And quickly he backed away from the little human he realized only then that he had moved far to close to, and just as quickly moved back underneath the computer. Instantly he set to work again, snatching up the coil of wire he had set down, and a couple of his tools with it. Quickly he was once again absorbed in his work. But just as quickly Laserbeak, still perched in the network of component cables above him, pulled his focus to her with a telepathic plea for his attention.

' _Something is bothering you,'_ Laserbeak said over the telepathic link. It was not a question. But it didn't need to be because she knew him more than well enough to be sure without guessing.

' _Assumption – negative,'_ Soundwave answered at once, denying.

 _'You lie, Boss. I see through your denial. Dare_ _I_ _ask what it is that bothers you out of seemingly nowhere.'_

 _'Laserbeak. We will resume our work at once.'_

 _'It's that_ _Earth being. That human youngling. I'm certain of it, Boss. The interaction left you confused...'_

 _'Laserbeak!'_ Soundwave exclaimed in firm telepathic warning, in a tone that he only hoped would tell her once and for all that the discussion was over. But the bird was not a slave to him, as much as so many bots would have perhaps liked to have assumed that to be true. And she had her own mind and a will just as strong as his own much of the time. Laserbeak would not be silenced when she did not wish to be, and he could never find it in his own spark to be truly angry with her for it.

Soundwave, questioning both his own judgment and his very sanity, as he had begun to more and more frequently since his defection, set down his tools again and made his way back out from underneath the computer. And this time, Laserbeak followed him, wiggling out of the wiring, and flying out behind him, before she made for the ceiling seeking a perch as soon as she was clear of the machine.

The young human sat exactly where he'd left him, cross-legged on the floor nearby and once again busy with the game he was playing against his laptop. The bot, leaned over once again, taking one more fast glance at the checkerboard pattern and the collection of digital icons on the boy's screen, and with a silent laugh the boy would never hear, he gestured once with a quick nod of his head for the tiny human to reset his game.

* * *

"We'll need to play on a much bigger computer eventually," The little human said, laughing after a while. And Soundwave actually laughed again inwardly and silent, at realizing just how ridiculous he clearly seemed, trying to interact with the tiny human-sized laptop computer.

He could not use the device himself. It was simply far too small. A single fingertip would have crushed the thing, and therefore use of the keyboard was out entirely. As was any hope of navigating around the screen with the touchpad. But watching the boy for less than a moment, listening as he explained once, Soundwave had learned an entire set of somewhat complicated game rules regarding the movements of every separate game piece on the tiny screen. And he had managed to roughly duplicate each one in his processor so that he could project them as needed, as well as a rough copy of the board itself, onto the screen of his face-shield, in order to show the boy where he wished to move his own pieces.

"Maybe Ratchet will let us play with the one upstairs," the boy suggested with a chuckle of laughter a moment later. He stared at his laptop screen, suddenly frowning, and Soundwave wondered if maybe he felt just a little too pleased with himself for having obviously trapping his tiny opponent in a position where he would lose one important game piece or other no matter what move he chose next.

"It's not used for monitoring and ground bridge work so much anymore," the boy went on. He frowned again, clearly considering which piece was best to give up, and not hurt his chances of a win later. "Not with the war finally over. Last night Knockout and Smokescreen were busy playing 'Call of Duty' on it."

Soundwave did not get the reference to the title the boy had named, though he did reason that it must have been some other game. But the very idea of such equipment used for simple entertainment when it was so recently required for war, made a positive emotion he'd not felt in long enough to almost forget he was capable of it, rise slightly in his spark. Laserbeak had made for the ceiling and the overhead beams as soon as she'd cleared the computer, and looking up now to watch her a moment, he saw her hope across the narrowest of beams in sidestepping motions designed only to be silly. And he remembered that she'd once loved to play all the time, long before he'd trained her to be serious and focused, and before he'd given her weapons and he'd taught her to shoot on command. He made her a warrior and a spy, and one day he'd stopped asking her altogether if he'd pushed her too far. Above him, high on the beam, she sidestepped again and her head rocked back and forth in time to her silly stepping and he knew that once again she'd seen his thoughts. And instead of anger toward him, she tried only to make him laugh. He remembered that she used to try exactly that all the time and she'd usually fail. He wondered now if she had ever really stopped trying, even after he'd become all but incapable of noticing entirely. He feeling rising up in his spark rose higher and finally, he put a name to the feeling. Hope.

"Soundwave..." A voice cut into his thoughts and he remembered the boy. Indeed the tiny human being was staring up at him from his position seated on the floor with the laptop when he finally looked at him again. "You okay? It… it's still your move."

 _'_ _Laserbeak,'_ Soundwave said, transmitting direction communication to her over their telepathic link. And though he still did not laugh out loud, he certainly let her hear the silent laughter they so seldom shared anymore. _'_ _Instruction. Calculate next logical move.'_

 _'Negative.'_ Laserbeak's answer was firm, and yet the humor behind her silent voice was more than clear now. _'This is your game, boss. I_ _may_ _play against the Human youngling myself once he beats you.'_

Soundwave had not smiled in so many years that he could not recall the last time he had. And his near-destroyed face-plate, hidden entirely from the world, was barely able to smile at all. But still, on a sudden impulse to do so, he tried his best to do so anyway.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"Arcee," Speedbreaker commented. She shifted her weight slightly on the bench she was sitting on, in the middle of the crowded midday market, so that she could look her friend in the optics. "You look tired..."

"Well maybe a little," Arcee answered. Cybershock half sat up, facing toward her in the little simple stroller that she so rarely seemed to use for her as much as she'd figured she would. And the bright red and light blue youngling, preferring much more to ride around, carried on her creator's lap while he drove a mobility cart, fussed a little, still clearly undecided as to how she felt about this alternate transportation. Arcee, after digging around a moment in the sack stuffed underneath the stroller, handed her a toy made of links of copper chain. And the youngling, grinning then, promptly stuffed the thing as far as she could into her mouth.

"Little one kept you up last night?" Speedy questioned, quite logically, and right as Cybershock as if on cue, gave a huge yawn of a baby so obviously ready for some unplanned recharge.

"No," Arcee shook her head and glanced from her friend to her now sleepy youngling and back again. "Cybershock has always recharged all night long almost every single night." She paused to quickly grab and hand back the toy, as her little one dropped it and before it could land on the market floor. "It was that mate of mine, last night."

"Is he alright?"

"Of course. Just another bad night is all. Well okay, maybe a terrible night. A nightmare. Then a panic attack. And right on into another nightmare. I tried to talk to him about it early in the morning, well before sunrise, and before he could say anything sensible, he went into reboot… twice." But Arcee smiled then, despite her not so great news, and she chuckled a little under her intakes. "He was still determined as ever to do rehabilitation this morning. So we did of course. Yeah, that worked out…. Not so well. He's gone back to recharge and off I went shopping without him because he insisted I go on anyway."

Arcee smiled down at the younging for a moment, as she gently shifted her, in her seat, so that she lay flatter now in order to comfortably nap in the stroller. Cybershock yawned again, and Arcee chuckled as she looked from her back to her friend.

"'Bee said once that things were getting better," Speedbreaker's tone was however doubtful.

"Oh, they are," Arcee only surprised her by smiling again, as she gave a confident answer. "It might not seem like it some days, but it's still getting better all the time."

Speedbreaker watched Arcee pull the little pink sack out from under the stroller and dig through it a moment reorganizing it quickly. She pulled out at least three small assorted toys, two bottles of premixed energon formula, a blanket, a wash rag…. Finally, she stuffed the now tidier bag back into its place under the stroller, in such a way that room was left for her shopping bag she'd set down by her feet. And promptly she put that under there too. A second larger bag of shopping, one that contained yet another toy, and a second set of miniature bedding for the youngling, hung perfectly from a handlebar. Cybershock, drifting quickly into recharge, suddenly startled at a sudden loud noise somewhere behind them, as younglings tended to so often do. And Arcee instantly grabbed the stroller by one handlebar, and for a moment she rocked it gently back and forth until the youngling quickly dozed off.

A pair of bots, a blue and white one and his green and silver mate, passed close by, arm in arm with a small youngling of their own, a giggling blue and green one, riding in his own little stroller. The little one, older than Cybershock perhaps but clearly not by much, wiggled and reached from one side to the other trying so clearly hard to grab at anything he could as he was pushed slowly through the market. When the pair stopped moving a moment to talk quietly to one another, the youngling, sitting close by, watched Cybershock as she recharged in her own stroller, and he giggled at her slightly before his family moved on again. And Arcee smiled at the little on as they did so, smiling brighter then he waved one little white hand at her.

"Ratchet very recently suggested that soon we may just need to consider building an early education center to serve the needs of a city in a baby boom, nearly overrun with little bots..." Arcee mused, and tired though she may have been, she was fully energized by her growing excitement. "And he's right, I see lately. There were younglings born on those returning ships, and many are only now still first frames… Ratchet says he's seen two expecting carriers already wanting advice and checkups..."

When another bot hurried by, his arms loaded up with what was obviously a yet-to-be-assembled youngling recharging basket and a stack of tiny bed covers, and a too familiar kind of grin on his face-plate, Arcee chuckled again in Speedbreaker's direction.

"You see?" she said laughing happily. "The Allspark, it seems, is making up for lost time now that it's back on Cybertron where it belongs..."

"It would seem so," Speedbreaker said. But her tone, mumbled while she looked suddenly down to her knees, was instantly concerning.

"Speedy?" Arcee questioned cautiously. Then she stopped, waiting for her young friend to speak again, and hoping that indeed she would.

"I… I'm carrying too," Speedbreaker said after a moment.

"Oh!" Arcee's optics opened slightly wider and she quickly hid her surprise. And not a second after that she wondered why it was that she should have been surprised at all, to begin with, when she'd known full well just how likely something exactly like that was to happen.

"It's not like this is a bad thing," Speedy said after another moment's pause. "'Bee and I both knew we wanted a youngling of our own. But we wanted one someday. We wanted to time it better… get this right… get on the list for a much bigger apartment, where we could raise three, maybe four eventually. 'Bee has just started medical training. I still work in my carrier's sweet shop..."

"My situation is no more ideal," Arcee answered, reminding her of the obvious. But still she smiled as she spoke. "Severely disabled bond-mate, who if I'm honest is almost as much work to care for as the youngling is. We are still raising a child on a military base. We need housing and I know that. But I have yet to work out how that's going to work. Still, Cybershock is loved and cared for. She's usually smiling. We do that best we can and we need to believe that's more than good enough. Primus knows she's become Knockout's biggest motivation to keep on trying and trying for the next tiny bit of progress..."

"Don't tell anyone else yet and let this spread around the base. Because we both know of course it certainly would and fast. You're the first to know so far."

"It's hardly my place to go saying a thing..."

"Well you're the first to know aside from Knockout. I asked him if he'd mind seeing me the other day, since all I needed was a quick consultation and a medical scan. I told him I understand he's perfectly capable of that, when he questioned why I didn't go to Ratchet, who was obviously already triple booked and busy. 'Bee still has no idea… I was going to tell him yesterday. But he worked late, come home so tired and still insisted he needed time to study..."

"I'll tell Ratchet he had better give him the morning off tomorrow," Arcee said, her decision made at once. "You'll have plenty of time to break the good news."

"Thank you," Speedy said. Surprised but grateful for the favor. The two of them got up from the bench and made their way slowly toward a stall filled with bedding and curtains and table covers of every description, and most of it well made by hand.

"Hey, not a problem," Arcee nodded, just as happily, as she gently rocked her child's stroller back and forth while her friend browsed through a rack of various brightly colored heavy curtain panels. Indeed it was the least she could do, she reflected to herself, for the bot who might as well have been her brother, and the good friend who had enough compassion and smarts, and lacked enough ignorant judgment that she would approach Knockout as his patient without the slightest thought that there was any risk at all in doing so.

"You really think we can possibly make it?" Speedbreaker questioned, anxious again. She stepped toward the rack of heavy curtains – something she still badly needed for a tiny apartment still not half way to being decorated and furnished – and carefully she lifted a light green panel from the rack on its hanger so that she could inspect it in the light overhead.

"I know you can make it. If me and Knockout can possibly make life work and still manage to be the decent parents I finally believe we are, you and 'Bee surely have little to worry about." Arcee spoke excitedly, offering assurance while she continued to gently rock the stroller and her recharging little one. And when Speedy's optics wandered first once and then a couple more times, in the direction of a nearby market stall filled with brightly colored decor designed for tiny youngling's rooms, while she paid for the curtains she had decided to purchase, Arcee gently grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward the stall, laughing.

"I can only hope my own youngling is as perfect as Cybershock when it comes to its personality and disposition," Speedbreaker mused. Her optics moved from her friend's calm and recharging youngling, to a stack of colorfully patterned bedding at the front of the stall they had hurried over to.

"Impossible," came the quick and laughing reply. "There will never be a child on Cybertron as perfect as mine."

"Says you!"

Arcee was about to reply with humor to that, but her commlink beeped loudly before she could even open her mouth again. And instantly considering several reasons at once why someone might call her while off duty, and none of them good, she connected the call at once.

 _"_ _Arcee,"_ Ratchet's voice saidquickly over the commlink. And his hurried tone told her it was urgent. _"_ _I'm sorry to interrupt you during your off time. But you need to return to base at once."_

 _"_ _Did something happen to Knockout?"_ she questioned just as quickly. And already she had turned the youngling stroller around ready to hurry toward the marketplace doors. He'd been tired when she'd left him, but he'd told her to go ahead and meet her friend while he simply napped awhile. With her fuel tank dropping in her frame, she wondered if perhaps he'd been unwell and hadn't known or at least not admitted to it again. Whatever it was, if Ratchet was calling her to hurry back, it had to be serious… Her tank dropped further and flipped with dread.

 _"He's perfectly fine,"_ came fast assurance from the old medic. But before she had even a second to feel relieved, he continued on speaking, quickly as ever. _"_ _It's Starscream_."

 _"_ _What about him? On second thought, Ratchet… do I wanna know?"_

 _"Get back to base as quickly as you can. I'll explain when you get here."_


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes/ Oh my goodness! Its been ages since my last update. And I do truly apologize for that. I've had some health issues, almost immediately followed by an out of town move, which of course meant a need to hunt for a place to live and then unpack in said place,and a new city to learn my way around... None of this is a good enough excuse for not updating :( And worse, this chapter is not too long of one... plus it's a sad chapter.**

 **Yeah, I'm on a roll of perhaps the wrong kind, haha. Next update will be quicker now**

Arcee had assumed that Ratchet might just be waiting to meet her somewhere close to the main outer doors, as soon as she had returned to base. But he wasn't, and indeed she walked quickly, all the way to the common room, still pushing her youngling recharging in her stroller, without running into anyone.

"Anyone home?" she called out jokingly, and keeping her voice quiet so as not to wake Cybershock, as she walked into the common room and looked around quickly. The only one in there turned out to be Bulkhead, who sat comfortable on a bench close to the furthest wall, with a worktable close by, intently reading and writing on a datapad with the pen he held on his hand.

"Looks like everyone's away tonight," Arcee commented. A sense of strange dread and mixed emotions had began to well up in her fuel tank and all the way to her spark. And she chatted ideally for a moment, while she tried to force her tank to settle. "I don't even see any of the kids anywhere." Cybershock, suddenly finished with what turned out to be a very short nap, fussed just enough to get her carrier's attention. And Arcee lifted her from the stroller and into her arms, smiling slightly when the little one giggled happily.

"The kids went off exploring," Bulkhead answered. He stopped writing and looked up from the datapad. "Of course I told 'em to be careful, and don't go past the fence if they get outside. Jack will keep Miko out of trouble."

"Have you seen Ratchet?" Arcee asked, finally daring to do so. When the youngling squirmed in her arms, she bounced her little one holding her against the side of her frame with both her arms. "He comm'd me while I was shopping…. Said to come back as soon as I could..."

"He's waiting for you in the medbay. Oh, and Knockout is with him too. He comm'd me to help him, not long after you left. Of course I helped him..." The big green bot stood up from the bench, and stepped closer to her, still carrying the pad. He placed it, with a shrug of his shoulders, into his storage compartment. Notes on probably still current construction, Arcee saw as he did so.

"Thanks Bulk'" Arcee mumbled, distracted, uneasy and far from liking it. "Sounds like I had better hurry." Pausing a second, uncertain of exactly what to do with her youngling, who she still carried resting happily in her arms, she turned quickly and held her out to her teammate. "Take the baby for a few minutes, please?"

"Got 'er," Bulkhead answered quickly, and he grinned nodding as he quickly – if not somewhat more awkwardly than might just have been ideal – took the youngling from her. "Alright you, come here." He chuckled a little, and with his confidence clearly growing steadily, he settled the little one against his frame, supporting her on his hip joint just as he so often saw others do. "What do ya say we hit the gym for a while, Kid? You're never too young to learn to throw a nice right hook!"

The little one just laughed, happy as ever as her carrier turned to hurry from the room. And for that Arcee was relieved.

Ratchet, sure enough, was waiting for her standing in the hallway right outside the closed doors of the medbay. And he stepped toward her fast as soon as Arcee practically power walking, rounded the bend in the hallway. The old bot, Arcee saw at once with a falling spark, did not exactly look so good. He was so clearly tired, and shook his head slightly with an almost blank look in his optics. And beside him, sitting still in his mobility cart, Knockout stared down at his knees.

"So what's this Starscream situation?" Arcee questioned, as she joined them by the door. And she wondered to herself just why it was that her processor was screaming at her by now that she just didn't want to know the answer.

"He's taken a dive," Ratchet said, speaking slowly in low tones. "I know we all saw it coming. But this was fast even for his condition. Arcee, if he lives through the night I'd be amazed. He's been somewhat coherent today, or at least some of it…. Though it's very on and off. He's been asking specifically for you. Insisting, during the moments he can speak sensibly and the world clearly makes some amount of sense to him, that he needs to talk to you."

"Yeah, well what makes anyone think I wanna talk to him?" Arcee's reply was far too snappy and she knew it. But dread and confusion was welling up again in her frame. And the worse the feeling got the less she liked it.

"Arcee..." Ratchet's tone was one of warning. But hardly one that lacked compassion. And without another word he simply lowered his optics and shook his head again just a little.

With a sigh, intended to clear her intakes, Arcee looked at the old bot, forcing herself to speak properly again. "Did… did he say what he wanted?"

"I have no idea. He only said again and again that he needed to talk to you."

"Of course I would get so lucky."

"Arcee… please. Have some compassion..."

"Starscream never showed the slightest hint of compassion for any one of us," Arcee grumbled, with a defiant scowl on her face-plate. She held her frame rigid, and resisted a fast growing urge to turn around and stomp off. "He never showed even a hint of compassion for Cybertron itself. Willfully choosing to continue a pointless war, when everyone around him said no more… And let's not forget about how he used to bomb our field hospitals full of already mortally wounded, just to prove he was bad enough to do it! Give me a moment and I'll list at least two dozen of his war crimes! A list nearly as long as that of Megatron himself..."

"The situation… his condition. It's bad," Knockout said quietly, interrupting her grumbling rant. He mumbled toward his knees, and still not looking up. And the tone of obvious near horrified shock, that he tried seemingly almost too hard to hide from his voice, made Arcee's air of defiance crumble at once. She stepped closer to him at once and listened while he went on speaking. "His awareness is surprisingly good for the most part… That's not uncommon I suppose, with bots as they come closer to gradually off-lining. The color is fading out and the paint is chipping. And he just doesn't seem to ever stop shaking. A mix I suppose of his illness itself in this late stage, and enough high dose pain medication that he should probably not still be conscious...

Leaning' forward, Arcee placed her arms around her bondmate's upper frame. And for a moment she just hugged him silently with her head against one of his shoulder panels, while he sat still on his cart. Though their shared connection she strongly sensed his emotions, so mixed and varied and contradictory to each other that it barely made sense at all. And she sensed just how little sense it made to him on top of it all. Without much of a thought at all about it, she sent back feelings of her own understanding, love and respect. After a moment, he slowly lifted his stronger and functional arm, so that he could hug her back, and for only another second or so they just stayed exactly like that.

"Where's Cybershock?" Knockout asked her, finally snapping out of his state of dismay.

"She's with Bulkhead." Arcee reluctantly let him go and stepped back. "He took her to the gym of all possible places." She forced a tiny laugh, before her face-plate turned serious and she gestured vaguely toward the medbay doors, "I've gotta go and deal with this..."

"I'd better go and get that youngling of ours," Knockout muttered, probably thinking out loud more than anything. He slowly turned the a little and rolled quickly away.

Arcee turned to follow Ratchet as he walked quickly back into the medbay. The doors slid shut behind them, and he lead her around to the back of an otherwise empty and quiet room. And she followed him right to a recharge station set up into an almost flat position, where Starscream lay unmoving, dull in color, and connected to a terrifying number of monitors and machines meant obviously to carry out functions his own systems no longer could. His red optics were open just slightly, and that was enough to show that he was still awake, though it might not have looked like it all until Arcee slowly stepped close enough to notice. And sure enough his body shook slightly yet constantly and it was clear in under a second of watching, that it would not just simply stop.

Bumblebee sat in a chair beside the recharge station, not doing much of anything at all, but simply sitting. At this point there was clearly so little left that anyone _could_ do. But his hand, strangely, brushed steadily against one of Starscream's wingtips – an action that was obviously purposeful and deliberate. The young bot looked up when his teammates approached. And look on his faceplate, however uncertain it may have been, was also a mix of the usual compassion and determination he'd shown from the very first of his training days.

"That tends to be the simplest way of calming a panicking flier," Ratchet told Arcee, distracted while he nodded approval in his young student's direction. "Of course Knockout needed to teach him that only once." The old bot's face turned far more serious than it had been already, and he continued on, speaking quickly now, but in a near whisper and standing close to her.. "Arcee, I'm leaving you my med scanner, in case you should need one quickly. Call me in seconds, if he suddenly crashes. And I won't lie. That could easily happen. The machines are pretty much the only reason he's still online, and even that is barely sustainable now."

Before she knew it, Both Ratchet and Bumblebee had left together, conversing in hushed tones under their intakes. And as the medbay doors, far across the room closed again, Arcee stood a second doubtful and dumbfounded, with a med scanner in a nearly trembling hand, and staring down at a dying bot who had once been a sworn enemy. With a slow deliberate intake to clear her processor and collect herself, she quickly set the scanner down onto a nearby worktable still in reach. And just as quickly, she hurried around to the other side of the recharge station in order to pick up the chair that her teammate had left for her, carry it back around to the other side and hesitantly sit down on it.

"Hi," she said simply, keeping her tone quiet. and keeping the greeting so simple because she had not a clue what else she could or should possibly say.

Starscream's optics were so close to being closed. The remaining slits of red still visible were so hopelessly clouded and dim, that it looked as though he may have had no awareness left at all, of her presence or of much else. But slowly, with obvious difficulty, and blinking against the bright lights above, he opened his optics much wider again. And it was obvious he could see and recognize her, because he turned his head just slightly so that he could stare at her in pain and uncertainly of his own.

"Hi," he said back. His voice was just as shaky as his body, and so uncharacteristically quiet. But he spoke in obvious coherence. Arcee wondered to herself how long that might just last, before he lapsed again into rambling delusions.

"Ratchet called me," Arcee said, speaking calmly and with an assumption that he could indeed still understand her. She hoped she'd know if suddenly he couldn't. "He insisted I hurry back. Said you needed to talk."

"One day last year, my blaster nearly blew your foot off..." Starscream said. His optics blinked and he appeared to struggle a second to keep them open and looking at her. And she cringed slightly, remembering, while she wondered why he would remind her of that. And so much had happened since that day, so much of it wonderful.

"I didn't mean to," he continued slowly, and after he'd taken a moment to just lay strangely smiling at her. "You fought with honour. I would have too… loss of weapon control… a first sign I was failing and I knew it. Though I tried hard to hide it..."

"I'd wondered that when I knew..." Arcee answered honestly. "That very same night was the night me and Knockout knew we loved each other," She wondered for only a second why she would bother to tell him that. But then what did it matter now? And starscream, oddly appeared to almost try to smile at that – something so unlike his usual hate filled and angry, ever-vengeful smile of twisted rage.

"I never understood why anyone would devote themselves and give their spark to a broken bot, until I saw the look on your face when you said that. It would truly have broken your poor spark if I had managed to kill him. And what did you ever do that I could possibly hate you that much?" Starscream went on smiling while he talked, however slowly. "You have his youngling. That day on the battlefield, I… I didn't know that then. I only wondered what it could possibly be that the crazy fragger would so willingly have died in order to protect. That baby… he could not possibly deserve to lose his creator..."

"She," Arcee answered, with a hint of a smile of her own. "The younging is a girl."

"I wish I could have met her."

"I think you know full well why I couldn't possibly have my child anywhere near you..."

Starscream gave one slight and silent nod at that, and Arcee knew quickly that he did indeed understand exactly why. The look on his face-plate though, given a second after that with his optics still closed, shocked and surprised her enough that she felt her speak pulse speed up beneath her chest panel. He was, she saw, genuinely disappointed and probably truly saddened. And Arcee had barely a moment to wonder why it was he so truly wanted to see her baby, before she had made a strange decision, and opened her storage compartment in order to reach inside. Hesitating just a moment, and almost but not quite second guessing herself, she found a small photo-file in its digital mini-frame that she usually carried.

"Would you like to see her picture?" she invited, with slight hesitation. And Starscream nodded once with a strange almost joy-filled look on his face-plate.

He could not hold the frame himself. That much was clear without even needing to see him try, which he did not. Both of his arm and hands stayed still by the sides of his body, while Arcee held the photo near his optics. And he blinked a couple of times, trying obviously to make his vision focus itself on the digital image. And finally he smiled again.

"Arcee," he said after he'd smiled at the image another long moment. And his voice was slightly louder now, stronger and urgent. With a clearly weak and now badly shaking left hand, he gestured toward the worktable she'd set the scanner down on. "My datapad. It's in the drawer..."

Reaching over and still seated Arcee pulled open the worktable drawer and easily found the pad, that sure enough had been left in there. But Starscream could not possiblly manage to take it from her when she offered it to him, and indeed it seemed he barely even tried to.

"Read it..." he said, quiet again. And his words died out as she powered up the datapad in her hands.

She settled back in the folding chair and when text appeared on the screen, following the very brief start up sequence, she stared blinking for a moment and barely comprehending exactly what it was she was reading. Starscream must have typed it, obviously, using a keyboard interface. His condition would never have allowed him to write with a pen in his hand. But he had signed it at the bottom, however close to entirely illegible the signature was.

"A peace agreement?" Arcee said after another moment of simply staring. It was meant to be a statement of her own understanding. But still it only came off as sounding too much like a question anyway.

"You are, it seems, the highest ranked of the Auotbots now," Starscream answered slowly, and with his voice almost impossibly quiet. "It only makes sense that would sign for your faction. This... this _is_ what you wanted…?"

The agreement would never be official. Such a thing should have been signed formally by both of them in the presence of at least four other bots from each side of the war, two of which from each would then co-sign beneath them, with the rest acting as witnesses. There should have been no less than five bots of neutral status, two of which would sign as well. And Arcee knew that Starscream knew this just as well as she did. But then what did it really matter now? The war had ended when the would as whole decided it had, and perhaps it had truly ended centuries before, when most of both sides had grown fed up with fighting it.

With a pen she found after a quick moment of digging around in the drawer, Arcee signed the simple document, at the bottom of the page. It may not have been formal, and it would never matter. It made Starscream happy to see her sign her name beside his and suddenly the idea that he could perhaps pass on with some degree of happiness, felt right to her.

"Yeah," she said thoughtful and nodding a little. "It is what I wanted."

Starscream was both quiet and perfectly still for several moments, except of course for the endless trembling of his limbs. And Arcee could easily have assumed the bot had fallen into recharge, if not for his optics, which remained half way open.

"Your medic says I might have hours... a day and I'd be lucky," he said after several minutes. But he still didn't move again. Finally after what seemed like minutes he raised his right hand just a little, and his optics went to the monitoring band strapped around his wrist, with its wires tucked out of the way beside the recharge station. "Of anything I once thought I might just be at the end… this was not it. Wires and gadgets everywhere… alive only this long because of a dozen machines..."

"Starscream, I'm not sure I'm the best bot to be trying to talk to about..."

"Please..." Starscream interrupted suddenly, his voice so clearly pleading. And Arcee was taken aback entirely at the coolant that spilled without any warning from his optics. "No more interventions. Some system fails and there are always more and more wires and lines… a medical team trying to force my body to work when it wants to give up. And it all just makes it so much worse… I try to say no, please just stop but by then I can't say anything..So I scream and scream instead. And they only think I'm completely gone entirely… and they assume I don't even know I'm screaming like that..."

His body, which had trembled all along for reasons she knew he could certainly not control, was shaking almost violently by then, as his pleading explanation quickly turned to full on panic. His optics had, at some point opened wide so that he could look around the room in a too clearly confused kind of growing terror, and as soon as he'd stopped speaking abruptly, his words were replaced by sobs of panicked despair, unlike anything Arcee had ever thought in a million years she would witness from him of any bot.

"You have a right to refuse..." she said slowly. If any of her earlier anger still remained, it was now transformed fully into a new determination to help a fellow Cybertronian who she'd quickly come to see as now much more helpless than herself. "I'll gladly speak up for your feelings about all that should the situation arise..."

With some hesitation, Arcee reached out to place a hand gently against his wingtip. And with still greater hesitation she tried hard to copy the motion she had seen for just a second not long before. It took a moment, and probably several. But finally Starscream's helpless crying grew quiet and he half shut his optics again. For another few moments he only looked up at her, all the more tired now from the strain a display of such emotion had put on a weakened frame.

"You must wonder why I choose to let my life end here… let my condition kill me when I was still promised a decent chance..." Starscream said, speaking slowly after short while in which he'd recovered a little from the exhaustion of his strange bout of crying panic.

"It certainly crossed my mind," Arcee admitted. Her hand remained on the wingtip, and she continued on with her gentle motions of her finger tips against it. "Any sentence you would have faced in an Autobot prison would certainly not have been forever. And I know you knew it."

"I was no one special. Just a young bot of science when the world went to war. I wasn't stupid… I wasn't brilliant. Just one more young bot that tried so hard to stand out in the field of many much better than me. I'll never know why it was me of any bot, that Megatron chose to train up for his cause. But... it was me. I learned to fear fro my life more with ever day that passed. And fear taught me to be underhanded, dirty… anything it took to survive. I forgot what I'd been. That little human friend of Bulkhead and Knockout… she made me remember where I started… that I had passion once for things far removed from waging endless war. I never deserved to be scrap… garbage to use at one sick bot's will. And a tiny human dared to tell me… You are rebuilding our world. A brand new Cybertron that will surely be somewhere worth living for the first time in centuries. And I could never have a place on it. I would only destroy it in my drive to rule, because that's what was made of me… I'm only a weapon of destruction, who by now could never be anything more..."

Arcee understood, in that moment exactly what it was Optimus Prime had tried so many times to tell her. And indeed he'd tried so hard to tell the very same to every one of his Autobots. She remembered battle after battle, watching him shoot at the sky so clearly hoping only to bring Starscrean down alive but never to kill him. She remembered that Starscream had almost defected once. And she wondered now if he might truly have meant it before she'd made her mind up that she should beat on him, when he'd chosen to taunt her in his own confused lost uncertainty.

"Soundwave," Starscream said, and for the next few seconds he appeared to search for words with which to voice a thought that might just have been important.

"What about Soundwave?" Arcee prompted gently, hoping such prompting might do some good and unsure entirely if it would.

"Don't think I didn't know for at least a century that the fragger is practically blind." Starscream smiled then, and even laughed slightly under his intakes, before his face-plate turned completely serious. "Megatron would only have scrapped the most loyal of his officers in a pool of his own energon, had he ever known. So who was I to tell him, when he just somehow never noticed."

"It was honourable of you to protect his secret..." Arcee said. It mattered to her in that moment that he pass soon assured that his spark still held some shred of goodness.

And in response he looked at her again, appearing to think harder than he should have once needed to, before he spoke again. "Tell him someday for me, that I was wrong to shoot him from the sky, and I know that. Centuries of jealousy and competition… unending resentment… it went too far..."

"I will speak with Soundwave," Arcee promised, knowing she would indeed certainly do so. And as an afterthought she quickly added, "shooting down a fellow member of your own faction while in flight was a spark-less thing to do. We thought he was dead at first. But then he defected. He got out of all the madness. Soundwave is becoming his own bot now. And Laserbeak too. In a way, you may have saved them both."

"Where… where is Skywarp?" Starscream's voice, both weaker and shakier than ever interrupted her before she could think of anything she might say next and she snapped to full alertness at once when she realized that his words were entirely out of context and had nothing at all to do with the discussion of only a brief moment before.

"Starscream," Arcee said firmly. And her free hand reached quickly for the scanner she'd left on the worktable beside her, as she wondered all the while what exactly what use scanning him might be at that point.

"Hmm?" he asked, mumbling. And she knew by that that he was at least partly still aware of the present. But his partly open optics were staring at nothing. He was still aside from his trembling for another moment. Suddenly though, and unexpectedly both of his arms flew up in front of him, elbows bend and hands in weakly clenched fists, just as though he was trying helplessly to protect himself from something only he could see.

"No, no. Please don't, please don't make me…." he cried, quickly far from coherent as his arms tucked in closer to his body. Then he gave out a couple of loud and wordless screams of unseen terror, before he mumbled, "Skywarp? Where are you? Please… help me!"

"It's just a med scanner," Arcee said, forcing her voice to stay low, and trying hard to speak slowly, when he tried in his now badly confused terror, to knock the scanner from her hand. "Please hold still for a second, so I can scan you quick."

But Starscream only screamed again, shrieking into the air around them at nothing, and she knew than he was not simply afraid of the scanner she held. And when a heavy stream of coolant tears poured from his optics while he shook harder and harder, she knew he may not have even been aware of the device at all, or even who it was that was holding it. She moved to set the device down again, sure it was mostly useless by then anyway, and simply sat by him in her folding chair letting him sense the presence of a fellow Cybertrionain as well as he could have, while he screamed for a few more long moments.

"Arcee…" he mumbled after a moment more and coming back from his delirium when she hadn't known if he would. "Everything… hurts..."

"I know," she said back, with compassion.

"I… I can do better," Starscream mumbled. He was barely coherent now, and through half closed optics, his focus was on anywhere but the madbay or on the Autobot beside him. "I'll get it right. I'll get it right. I know I'm stupid. I know I failed you." The once feared flyer raised his arms again, placing his hands in front of him with more desperation then before, as he gave another wordless scream."

"Hey," Arcee commanded firmly, taken action with barely a thought. Her free hand went right to his shoulder panel and she shook it gently. "Look at me a second."

She'd witnessed a bot, her own bondmate, caught up in flashbacks and terrors within his own processor for long enough that such things barely even scared her anymore. And she'd pulled him back successfully to the present often enough that she thought perhaps she could pull this bot back into reality too, even though this one was a very different bot. But she couldn't. And the incoherent screams of terror went right on undeterred, as all the while he continued to wage a futile battle with only his weakly blocking arms, against something certainly not present in the room.

 _'_ _ _Ratchet,'__ Arcee remembered in under a second that surely he would know exactly what to do. And reason wisely told her that now was the time to call him back in. With a now shaky hand that she moved from the 'con commander's shoulder panel, she tapped a finger against her personal comm, and over it she almost shouted for the old medi-bot to get back there now. She turned her full attention back to Starscream, just in time to see the ever constant trembling of his body, turn abruptly into violent convulsions.

"Looks like we've got new problem now," she said, looking to the door as soon as it had slid open to let Ratchet in, with Bumblebee following close behind him. She lightly took hold of the bot's right arm before it could slam hard against the side railing of the recharge station, which a force that she knew could well be enough to badly hurt him.

"This isn't new," Ratchet answered without looking at her. "Just worse then I've seen before this. Arcee, back up."

"I was afraid this would happen," he muttered under his intakes, while he grabbed his scanner from the worktable. And quickly, with barely a glance in his direction, he snapped at his young student, "'Bee, get me his medication. Quickly. The blue container to your left. And get over here fast. I 'm gonna need your help."

The requested medication, which Ratchet injected quickly into an energon line already attached to the dying bot's body, did indeed put a stop to the terrible convulsion – though it did take far longer than the old medic clearly would have liked. And he mumbled that fact under his intakes, while he shook his head frowning.

"Ratchet," Bumblebee mumbled, helplessly. He stood nearby, holding the med scanner that he'd quickly retrieved,and staring its little view-screen. "Processor pressure is rising again."

"Clearly," the old medic snapped, almost too harshly, as he shook his head again. He opened his mouth too speak again, but he was interrupted before he could say another word, by a fully incoherent scream,as his patient went right back into violent convulsions again.

"Frag it," the old bot managed to mumble under his intakes. He held up a hand, clearly ready to give orders to his young student. But it was just as clear that he was not sure exactly what those orders should be.

Acree, standing back out of the way, and watching helpless with a sinking spark, remembered 'Bee's recent anxious words about leaking seals. Though she'd understood immediately that such a thing was obviously disastrous, it had been impossible to fully comprehend exactly what it was the young bot had meant. And she gave a gasp of horrified shock, at seeing first hand exactly what it was he'd been talking about, as the very same thing happened again with so little warning. The head,face-plate,and even part of the upper body of the rapidly failing bot, were covered with drenched with his leaking energon supply before anyone could even begin to determine exactly where it was leaking from.

"What do we do?" Bumblebee questioned. And through the obvious and growing panic he so clearly struggled to force back, Arcee could see a look of determination in his optics,she'd seen more than once from both Ratchet and Knockout, when faced with life or death emergencies.

"I'm not exactly overwhelmed with options," Ratchet mumbled while his head shook in clear dismay at the situation. But after no more than a second of this, his head snapped upright again and he looked at the younger bot with his own determination and a decisive look on his face-plate.

"Hurry and bring me the toolkit from the cabinet to your left and in the top corner," he ordered quickly. And he pointed vaguely right toward the one he meant, but there was little need, because the young bot was already running straight for it. "My last hope now is that if we can just manage to disconnect the processor from all four of the main connectors... we might just be able to stop..."

"Won't that leave him without processor function?" 'Bee questioned quickly. But he grabbed the kit even as he questioned.

"Not entirely."

"but... he'd be non-functional. We'd leave him without self awareness, without an ability to think..."

"Bleeding to death within minutes would be far worse," Ratchet snapped. He grabbed the toolkit his student had run back to him with,and he shook his head just a little, in obviously effort to gather his wits again. And with this far quiet and more considerate he hurriedly explained, "we leave him almost non-functional, yes. But only until I can think of something..."

"Ratchet," Arcee spoke up, finding her voice in the midst of chaos. And it was only when the old bot turned to look at her, startled,that she realized how close she had come to a snapping tone herself. With one fast intake to steady herself, she stepped toward him, with a hand outstretched. And with it, she gently grabbed the hand he used to hold his toolkit.

"Please, don't do that," she said softly. Her optics stared into his with compassion and determination. And with her free hand, she gestured toward the dying bot without turned away from the medic. "Something like this, an intervention that extreme, it's the very last thing Starscream would want. Ratchet... please, just let it end here..."

"Arcee... you're sure?" The old bot looked at her, startled,and shaken. But he stayed where he stood for a second more just to hear her out.

"Yes," Arcee nodded, confidant.. 'He told me so himself."

"So, what now?" Bumblebee questioned slowly. He stood still in his place, on the medic's other side, and a few paces away from him.

"We let him go," Ratchet answered. His tone was so final, and he nodded his head slowly in understanding. Considering for just a second more he gestured vaguely toward the dying bot in front of them. And slowly he mumbled thoughtfully, "I'm going to disconnect all primary life support measures. But we'll leave secondary systems running, as well as the connected energon lines. That'll be the best situation for him in his final minutes."

"It's really just minutes then?" Arcee questioned. She found herself close to being sad just saying those words, and inwardly she questioned why, after centuries at war, that feeling possibly made sense.

"Several minutes at most," Ratchet confirmed. "And that's for the best, I assure you."

Arcee, nodding her understanding, stepped closer again to the dying bot. And unsure exactly why, or even what it was she was looking for exactly, she studied him closely with her optics for a second. The violent convulsion had stopped again, this time without any intervention at all. But the energon, leaking from at least one seal and probably more of them now, burst and broken simply from rising pressure, had never stopped its steady dangerous flow. And his upper body was covered in it now. Starscream resembled a bot injured far worse then she had ever seen on any battlefield she'd been on standing among the dead and dying. The constant tremble of his limbs continued as ever. And yet somehow, his optics were open again, if only slightly. His face-plate, soaked though it was in damp glowing blue, showed a near hint of a peaceful smile of his understanding. And Arcee, stepping closer, smiled back for a second.

"Not... not good..." Starscream mumbled suddenly, with surprising coherence, and he lifted a hand a little, and appearing for the first time to notice the energon all over it as well as much of his frame. Arcee thought perhaps he might panic again. It would certainly not have been unreasonable, she supposed. But he didn't. Instead he simply lowered the slightly raised hand again and shut his optics with a look of acceptance.

"Everything is bright," he mumbled after another second. His voice was quiet than ever, but still he did not seem to panic in the least.

"I... I think it's supposed to be," Arcee answered, uncertain.

An alarm went off. Then another not a second after the first. The involuntary trembling stopped almost suddenly, and the third and last of the alarms rang before each of them stopped again.

Ratchet had just finished disconnecting the primary systems as he said he would. And before he could even let the last of the wires he held fall to the floor, he'd paused instead to stare in dismay at wall within his line of sight. Arcee reached out slowly, with some hesitation to take the bundle of too quickly gathered monitor wiring from him. The old bot did not like to ever lose a patient. Even when he knew it was inevitable. Even when that patient was an enemy. None of that mattered, and Arcee knew it all too well. Instead of further reaching for the wiring, she reached out instead to rest her hand a second on his shoulder panel. The old bot slowly moved then to look down at her and he smiled a somewhat shaken little smile in her direction before he stood up straighter again.

"Well that's that then," he said. Matter of fact as ever. His gaze went slowly to the clock hanging high on a wall to his left, and he made a careful mental note of the time. "We'd best call this one."

 **Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break**

Several of the bots and all three of their young human friends all sat together in the common room. But still for all of its occupants, the room was strangely quiet. For a good while, only quiet bits of conversation, mostly in hushed tones between two or three of them here and there could be heard over the steady sound of the usual tapping of the monitoring computer's keyboard. Eventually though Miko seated lazily on Bulkhead's big green shoulder panel, shifted her position and settled back again, this time slumped over half laying, with enough of a sigh and thump against his frame that she accidentally got the entire group looking in the direction of her and her bot.

"It's hard to believe, Starscream is really dead," she muttered, as she looked out over the room from her vantage point on top of her bot partner.

"It is hard to really believe," Raf agreed with her slowly. He sat in 'Bee's hands, which sat folded in the bot's lap while he sat on a bench by the far wall of the room. The youngest of the humans, shrugged a little and looked idly around at the others. "'Bee said Starscream was around since the start of the war. I guess he's just kind of always just... been. Ratchet says he might just have found his own kind of redemption in the end... It almost sounds impossible..."

'No more impossible than you somehow forging some understanding with Soundwave of all bots, that might almost resemble friendship," Jack pointed out with confident if not still almost slightly concerned look on his face. He smiled then and from his place on a bench beside Arcee, who sat holding Cybershock on her lap, and added slowly, "or Miko with Knockout for that matter."

"Anyone is capable of redemption," Miko had said it before and surely she would say it again. "That's exactly what Optimus always said. I guess that even includes Starscream."

"You forgive him?" Knocked questioned, from across the room. His tone though was only part question.

Miko shrugged a little, and moved so that she could face the other way and look at him.

"I don't know," she answered hesitantly. "Is anyone supposed to? I mean, he was ruthless and terrible. They say he killed thousands on Cybertron, all in the name of proving himself so the the world would fear him. But then on the other hand, he died in the end, just like anyone. And he was sick, and broken, not always in his right mind..." The human paused a second before she looked right at the red defector's optics. "How about you?"

"I... I don't know if I could ever even think about it," Knockout answered. But it took him a good moment to answer at all.

"So what happens to his body?" Miko asked, once again breaking the silence that had started to descend on the room. "What happens to any of you guys when someone dies?"

"His spark will return to the well, where most bots believe any bot faces the final judgment of our god, Primus. His frame will be put into the smelting pit," Bulkhead answered, his tone uncharacteristically matter of fact. "It's the very same for anybot."

"'Bee," Speedbreaker said suddenly, speaking moments after all conversation really had died out that time. She'd been standing by the wall far across the room. But quickly she hurried over, crossing the room in steps that were certain quick, though small for a bot's. The little tinted visor that served as her windshield in vehicle form, had flipped down to cover her optics again, as it tended to do. And she flipped it up quickly with one hand, while she reached out to him with the other and smiled a second at the little human that still sat on him, before her face-plate turned serious. "Ratchet says you are learning so fast. He told me tonight he has high hopes for you. Then he told me he fears you might just quit... He's been around a while, 'Bee. He says he knows the signs..."

"I'm not quitting, Speedy." Bumblebee's answer was quick and well assured. And he nodded his head in confirmation of exactly what he said, while he shifted, in order to lean forward to let his human partner jump easily down to the floor. "I thought for a while I would, yeah. I wondered for a while what on Cybertron I was thinking, even considering the medical field. But Ratchet was right all along. This is what I was meant for. I realize that now."


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes/ There was a bit of a wait for this chapter again, this time only because I simply could not seem to get it right. This was at first another one that did not want to be written, as I wanted it to be. As a result, a whole scene has been cut, to be added later, because I finally realized doesn't belong in this one, after writing it. This is another long chapter though, so that should make up for my slowness.**

 **Thanks again everyone for the wonderful reviews and feedback. I got a couple for the last chapter I posted, that really made my week. It makes me happy to hear that someone is still into this story. And I keep writing this because of that. I was also asked if this story is finished Almost... though not quite. Probably just a few more chapters. But there will be a second part, this one more of Soundwave's story if all goes to plan.**

Looking across his empty medbay over the top of a repair table, while he gave it a very typical sanitizing with clean rag and spray bottle, Ratchet watched Knockout as he quizzed Bumblebee on all manner of various matters of medical science. The red defector, he noticed curiously, made no attempt at all to stick to any specific pattern in his quizzing. One question may well have have had everything to do with wiring within lower limbs, while the next was related specifically to a virus that no bot had seen in decades. Ratchet was for a second about to question him on it, to tell him, tell both of them in fact, that that was hardly the way he would have approached it himself. But 'Bee's replies given to each question, many issued just as rapidly as Knockout could think - and that was certainly fast enough- were as a rule becoming quicker as the young bot learned to trust his knowledge and refrain from his usual overthinking and self questioning.

All the while, during their session of rapid quiz questions and answers, both of the younger bots did their own work in cleaning the medbay and equipment. The two of them were currently working together, doing a thorough job of the far wall's lower cabinets. And they had a workable system to their task. Knockout had pulled up to a worktable moved close to those cupboards, and Bumblebee emptied the cupboards one at a time, so that he could then dump their contents onto Knockout's table, where the red bot, working slower than most might have, but still doing a good job with one decent hand, sanitized them with a rag and spray bottle and waited until they were retrieved by his teammate and soon replaced with the tools from the next cupboard. 'Bee, meanwhile, during the time Knockout cleaned, sat on the floor cleaning the insides of empty cupboards.

"Very nice job, 'Bee," Ratchet said, still watching from his place partway across the room, when his his young student answered another question right – his tenth right answer in a row. The old medic paused a second before he said seriously, though almost as an afterthought. "Your drive and motivation has been something else lately."

"There's so much more to be motivated for now," Bumblebee answered. He backed up from the cupboard he'd been scrubbing. And for a short time he just kneeled on the floor, with a strange kind of smile on his face-plate.

Ratchet only chuckled under his intakes in response to that. Knockout's reactions to his own impending creator status, not so long ago, had been just so funny some days. And the old bot was glad for that reason and more, to be able to now see much the same from another of his teammates.

"I want my youngling to know someday, when she's old enough to understand, that if a bot works hard enough for something, it might just be achievable," 'Bee said after a moment. And he stood up from the floor, and began to quickly gather up the things that Knockout had finished working with on the worktable.

"It's a good thing then?" Ratchet inquired, tactfully. "The youngling on the way, I mean." Speedbreaker had so recently made it all to clear to him, that her greatest worry as she faced a very much unplanned carrying, was exactly how her still very new mate might just have felt about the whole matter. And from this his own concern had begun to grow.

"It's good news, yes," 'Bee answered. "I mean, I gotta admit I was shocked at first. That and terrified of course." He went right on restocking the cupboard as he talked. "Me and Speedy are still young bots ourselves. All I really know is endless war. We have a very small apartment... and so little else... But still Speedbreaker is so happy."

"Speedy loves my youngling," Knockout pointed out. He smiled then as he handed off items from the top of the work table with his right hand. "She'd love any one the two of you have five times as much as that."

"So many times over the years, in the heat of the worst of the battles..." 'Bee mused aloud. He paused in his work and simply kneeled on the floor a moment, thinking. "I thought I was surely going to be scrapped eventually. I know we all thought that time and again. I remember, more than once, fighting and fighting for all it was worth, outnumbered and surrounded, everything exploding, bots already offline everywhere I looked. And when I thought about how I might just be the next bot to fall, it was never the idea of dying that bothered me exactly. I was always as willing as any, to die for my faction if I must. The thing that bothered me instead, that sad regretful thought that always played and replayed in the back of my processor, was that I'd be long gone before I ever got to have my own children..."

After another silent, Bumblebee opened his mouth to speak again, more than likely meaning to finish his musing out loud. But before he could say another word, the medbay doors across the room, slid open. Speedbreaker, who had been helping out, working somewhere inside the base, hurried into the medbay. 'Bee stood up immediately from the floor, in order to greet his mate. But Speedy held up a hand with an urgent look on her face-plate.

"A medical emergency is on the way," she quickly explained. "Probably in minutes. Someone comm'd in ahead to say they are coming. And there are more behind that one..."

Ratchet had been busy, still cleaning repair tables while he socialized with his teammates. And immediately he tossed both his sanitizing cloth, and spray bottle of cleaner he held in his hand. Immediately his optics were looking right at hers and he was ready to pay attention.

"What's happened?" he questioned quickly. Already he was prepared to give out orders at once. "And how many?"

"Accident in an energon mine to the west of the city," Speedy explained, just as fast now. She shook her head a little in a gesture of uncertainty. "Something exploded. I... I don't know how many. The bot that comm`d... he couldn`t say."

"There could be twenty, thirty injured bots on the way. Many might be critical. Some might be offline on arrival," Ratchet said, immediately in no-nonsense and serious emergency mode. He'd seen situations before just like the young bot was hinting at. And he knew his best guesses at still unknown details, would be good enough guesses nonetheless.

"There's no way we're prepared for this kind of mass casualty disaster," Knockout pointed out.

He backed his cart quickly away from the work table he'd been using, and just as quickly he rolled forward and around so that he was heading toward the centre of the medbay. He looked around, quite helplessly around the place and Ratchet understood exactly what it was he was thinking. He was of course thinking the same thing himself. This was of course a medical bay, a small facility designed for first aid, medical scans, the treatment of some broken limbs, blaster wounds and wire kinks. It was of course equipped for far more urgent and serious things, including complex operations. But with limited space, and an even more limited member of capable personal, the prospect of a mass causality situation was truly nightmarish. But Ratchet, nevertheless, shook his head a little, and with one hand he waved off his comment.

"We do the best we can do," he said, as 'Bee, now standing nearby, stared at him in wide optic'd near panic. "They are being brought in here because there's nowhere else. And they're counting on us to do the best we can do." Ratchet looked around the room them, from one of his teammates to the next. He ignored the horrified looks, the expressions of doubt, the dismay and the panic. And quickly he gave a rapid string of orders. "Knockout! Comm Arcee at once. She's high level first aid. We can use her. And find Bulkhead too. He's always proven useful in here. And that Vehicon that proved himself on the battlefield. When you're done with those comm-calls, you're working crowd control, and primary patient assessments. 'Bee! You're with me. When I tell you where to go, you go. Meanwhile we've got repair stations to get set up. Go! Speedbreaker, man the comms and the door, and keep us posted..."

The set up of those needed repair stations was barely stated, let alone finished, when the medbay door slid open again, and a couple of bots hurried inside. Only one of the pair appeared at first glance to be injured, and the damage appeared to be little more than a badly broken foot, and a few bad bleeding gashes. Both of them were, however, coated head to foot in a think layer of dust, and both of their intakes choked and gasped from exposure to the dust in the air. Ratchet was ready to hurry over and assist the pair of dust covered miners. But Knockout was on it at once, and even with the mobility cart, he'd reached them faster. So the old medic only went on readying work stations, and watched, nodding approval as his teammate lead the damaged bot to the repair table closest to the back of the room, and then just as promptly grabbed a med scanner from his cart's side basket, while he asked him questions.

One more bot was hurried in, the one helped carefully by Speedbreaker, who must have found him somewhere outside the doors. This one was bleeding from both arms through wire mesh bandaging that had been used, however terribly, for temporary first aid. His blue optics, wide open with horrified shock, stared straight in front of him though his own coating of dust. Ratchet grabbed this one at once,

crossing the room in just a few running steps, to take him gently from Speedy's careful hold on him, so he could lead him quickly to the repair table, second closest to the back of the room. That bot was, at least so far, the worst of the two. And when the old bot explained that quickly to 'Bee who stood beside him again, he saw his young student nod his fast understanding.

"We had forty-six bots in that mine..." the damaged bot mumbled suddenly, and still clearly in a state of shock even as realization began to down on him. "...Must be fifteen trapped in the central pit... I found two dead myself..."

"You're going right into power down," Ratchet said calmly to the damaged bot, who was now also being to panic. "I assure you everyone will get here, and as they do, we'll do the best we can for everyone of them." The damaged bot only nodded, silent again.

The medbay doors opened and closed, and then did so again, and then again repeatedly, as a growing number of dust covered bots, many of the them suffering from varying degrees of damage, found their way inside. At some point early on in the chaos, Arcee hurried in with Bulkhead close behind her. And Ratchet felt relief at once for just a second as both of them immediately ran to repair tables to begin simple enough but no less urgent patch up jobs.

"Frag off! You busted up junk pile! You get away from my friend." A loud voice shouted in anger somewhere across the room. And Ratchet, busy now with some dusty bot that was leaking energon too quickly from a wound to his chest panel, looked quickly for the source of the shouting, just in time to hear a clatter of metal as the shouting bot knocked a work table deliberately to the floor.

"Pardon me," Knockout answered, loudly enough to be heard over the shouting, but still perfectly calm and collected while somebot pointed a furious finger in his face-plate. "I'm a perfectly capable medical officer, and I don't even need to scan this bot once to tell you he's clearly got a potentially serious head injury. And to know how bad that might be, I need to assess him. So step aside!"

"I will not! You... you get away from us both. I won't have anyone with optics as red as yours anywhere near..."

"Hey," someone commanded firmly, before Ratchet, who was just about to speak up while holding most of his focus on his urgent work, could do so. And the old medic blinked his optics in impressed surprise to realize the voice belonged to that of his young student, who had left his place beside him awaiting his next order, only to snatch up a large wrench from their work table. He quickly advanced toward the angry bot across the room, wielding it with a scowl of frustration on his face-plate.

"We don't need any of your ignorant, discriminate attitude right now. This is a medical bay. Not the time. Not the place. Your friend is injured, and I don't give a slagging scrap about your personal opinions right now." 'Bee gestured toward the barely conscious, clearly confused bot on a repair table near where he now stood, and waved the wrench in shockingly Ratchet-like fashion, at the other bot who stood in front of him. "Now you either stay out of Knockout's way or Bulkhead over there is going to toss you straight on out of here."

"Ratchet," Speedbreaker called suddenly. She ran back in through the doors that she'd been running in and out of all the while, directing some bots and physically helping others inside. This time though she was rushing as fast as she could, backwards, and doing her best to help a pair of slightly injured mining bots, who were carrying one of their badly damaged coworkers.

Ratchet looked up at once from his urgent work. And immediately he understood, before he even crossed to get himself closer to the new arrival, that this one was far more serious still. The worst of them yet.

"Repair station two," the old bot ordered, without missing a beat as he ran across the medbay. He looked over the damaged mining bot, just as soon as the others had managed to safely put him down. And he shook his head, dismayed, at the energon that mixed with the dust covering body armour so near to completely melted in places, that it was only hints of it's white and light yellow showed here and there.

"Ratchet... his... his chest panel is..." Bumblebee exclaimed, disbelieving, shocked, and so clearly shaken by the state of this bot. But still he had obediently followed the old medic, and stood waiting because he was so clearly unsure exactly what it was he was supposed to be doing. And Ratchet only nodded once saying nothing, because he of course saw exactly what his young student was trying, in his own anxious panic to state out loud.

The patient's front panel, had been nearly crushed entirely. Something heavy must have hit him hard. And years of experience told him it had been at very close range. Something had certainly gone flying. And the only thing that had stopped it had been this bot's own body. Then, judging by the burns, that thing had promptly exploded. And looking closely at the panel, crushed beyond reasonable repair, too little metal left of it not to have possibly meant that somewhere in the blast bits had not somehow gone missing, he cursed out loud at seeing the glowing of exposed spark energy, far beneath the bent and twisted wreckage.

"He was drillin' into the eastern wall," explained one of the stunned, and dusty bots that had been carrying this badly damaged and possibly dying one. "The survey got it all wrong. Shoulda hit rocks there, but he drilled right into an unstable energon deposit. The wall, and his equipment blew three feet in front of him..."

The badly damaged bot's optics snapped open then, showing his suddenly high decent degree of consciousness. And given his devastating injuries, that was not exactly ideal. In obvious shock, he stared up for a moment at the ceiling and the bright lights above him. One more fast moment, and his optics were open wider, and he struggled to move.

"Firestorm..." he mumbled. And when Ratchet only looked at him, baffled as what he talking about, the bot repeated it again, this time louder and close to screaming.

Ratchet searched his memory for anything – anyone – that might have been helpful in telling him what it was his patient was trying so desperately to tell him. And sifting fast through his memories of so many patients he'd never quite forgotten, he remembered almost instantly the white and yellow bot with the walking frame – the walking frame he had built and then painted light yellow to match the little bot's paint job. And instantly he remembered that the little bot was cared for by a nearly identically painted sibling.

"We need to contact her," Knockout said firmly, sadly and serious. He rolled up beside the others, clearly helpless to much at all for a bot with such a degree of damage, but just as clearly determined to scan and assess the two that had brought him in, as both them were hurt themselves. He nodded once toward the badly damaged bot, and said with certainty, "He's her brother."

"Knockout's right," said 'Bee, as recognition dawned on his face-plate. And he shook his head sadly for a moment. "And he's her only family..."

"Do either either of you have a way to reach her quickly?" Ratchet questioned, his decision made at once, and well aware that young Firestorm was a friend of them both. When they both nodded their heads quickly, the old bot mumbled in certainty and now focused almost entirely on a bot he knew may not live long, "someone call her down here, quickly."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Walking idly away from the Autobot base, Soundwave wandered beyond the property line, and unhurriedly stepped around a still standing section of the high metal fence, which was now well into the process of eventual tear-down by some of the 'bots. Wandering without a need or desire to get anywhere, walking for the simple sake of walking, was a new concept to him. But he was quickly discovering just how much he enjoyed it anyway. And daily walks were becoming routine.

His wandering that evening took him in a new direction, this time moving toward the centre of the growing little city springing up steadily around the base. But instead of stepping at some point onto the walkway that would take him along the edge of the first of the main roads, he turned moving slightly to the west, so that he could walk on the rougher and less perfected pathway behind 'downtown' Now to his right, high-rise housing buildings rose up in the distance, and the much smaller commercial stores sat far closer. And to his left, the sulphur field stretched for miles in front of jagged cliffs and huge shining crystals. In the sky high above him, Laserbeak flew in little circles while at the same time she roughly followed the path below her.

Silently laughing just a little to himself, at watching how his lifelong companion so clearly enjoyed her freedom where she had never truly had the chance before, Soundwave rounded a bend as the pathway veered suddenly to the right. And he found his path unexpectedly blocked by large chunks of crystallized sulphur - the likely result of some excavation work left unattended and without warning signs, by workbots who had never bothered to do anything with it, aside from leaving in on the little used walkway before calling an end to a workday. Soundwave may well have simply stepped over or around it. The rocks were large but certainly not so big it would have stopped him entirely. But a strange yellow painted walking frame parked carefully against the smooth and closest edge of the large sulphur chunk, got his attention at once. And the small white and yellow bot that learned against that caused him immediate concern. Before he had time to convince himself that she should not matter – that one random bot he barely knew a thing about should make no difference – he quickened the pace of his walking, and carefully approached her.

"Inquiry – Firestorm- alright?" he asked with awkward hesitation, and all too aware that his tone barely indicated at all that it was indeed meant to be a question.

"Hi, Soundwave," Firestorm said slowly. It was more than clear that she had been practising a lot, putting a great deal of work into her speech and language skills. Even still her words were far from perfect. She looked up from her place, sitting on the walkway, with her back to her walking frame. But did not move to actually get up from the ground. After another second she looked down again and mumbled with hesitation, "I just been thinkin'..."

"Firestorm's brother – damaged in the mine disaster," Soundwave said slowly in reply. It was not a question, but instead his best try at stating his understanding.

The little white and yellow bot nodded her head slightly, and looked up again at him. Slowly, moving carefully, and struggling to hold her balance in doing so, moved so that she was for a moment kneeling on the walkway, before she turned, reached for the handholds of her walking frame, and used that to pull herself to her feet. "Ratchet says he lucky ta be 'live. And we still dunno what could happen... I always told'im I didn't like the thought of 'im in the mines... Tha' raw energon can eas'ly explode. He... he always says it safe 'nough, and he fine." Firestorm stood a while simply looking silently up at him. Finally she said, in the kind of tone that Soundwave knew so many used when they only wanted to convince themselves of something, in the face of uncertainty,

"You have... seen him?" Soundwave inquired. And Firestorm slowly nodded.

"Yeah... Idid. It.. it is bad. Ratchet lem'me see'im a minute before he powerdown for majorrepair... Windstorm – m'brother, he looook so bad. His metal is burnedup. He stillcover in energon. He tell me, be gooood... try hard... The wholemedbay was ah'full t'day. Bots ever'where, damaged... Some'one on either side-a roooom, scream for help..." Firestorm stopped speaking, and for a moment she just stared up at Soundwave, optics wide with growing fear as she faced uncertainty. But just as quickly, a hint of a smile came to her face-plate. And she so clearly searched for and found hope, because she mumbled slowly, "Ratchet gooood at wha' he does. Windstorm... be okay..."

"Inquiry – Do you have a place you can go?"

"I dunno... I thought'bout staying alone at'home. But I could gointo reboot..."

That was a fair and real point she had made, and the reason Soundwave had asked in the first place. He wondered at the wisdom of her even being out alone in the city and moreover, in a quiet and empty area of it, because of her condition and the obvious risk. But then he knew that Knockout took the very same and greater risks on a very regular basis, only because he simply never wanted to fear life itself. It certainly stood to reason that it would have been much the same for this young bot.

"Suggestion – speak with Autobots. Request accommodation."

I willdo tha," Firestorm was silent a second before she continued on with hesitation and looking around her with clear uncertainty. "Iam sorry tohave disturbed yourwalkin.' I know ya don't muchlike talkin' tooanyone..."

"Skill in socialization – vastly improving," Soundwave answered slowly. And Firestorm smiled a little in his direction.

Above them, Laserbeak flew in one more circle, this time a much wider one, before she gave a happy chirp and dove quickly from the sky. She perched at once on the arm that Soundwave extended for her, and sat simply looking around.

"The bird ispretty..." Firestorm said speaking slowly as ever. But clearly she was trying with even greater effort to speak clearly. And Laserbeak, perched on Soundwave's outstretched arm, lifted her head as high as she could in a gesture of self pride at the compliment, and lightly buzzed in appreciation.

"Sheis smart..." the young bot went on, after she'd watched the bird for a second. And she laughed slightly under an intake, while her usual bright smile began to show again on her face-plate. "Shecan under... stand ever'ting we say."

"Laserbeak – fully capable, intelligent, and self aware life form," Soundwave answered simply.

"How'd ya get'er?"

"She chose me," Soundwave answered simply after a moment. And if only he'd been better at conversing out loud, if only words come to him just well as they did for anyone else, he could have explained just how a connection between a bot and symbiotic being worked. But he didn't because he could barely work out exactly how to do so.

Firestorm let go of her walking frame's handlebars, so that she could shift her grip just slightly. And at the same time she shifted her weight just a little, with one tiny step forward. That would have been perfectly fine, of course, except that her foot landed on a smooth and too slick little bit of loose metal on the rough walkway. And where most bots would easily catch themselves with little thought about it, her terrible balance made her stumble badly, and the weakness of her legs made her fall awkwardly forward because of her stumble. Her hands reached at once for the handholds of her walking frame obviously trying to catch herself that way. But her reach was off, and instead she accidentally shoved the whole thing over as she continued in a fall from which it was clearly she could not possibly save herself.

Without taking even a second to think, Soundwave reached out with his free arm not currently occupied by Laserbeak, and quickly grabbed her arm to stop her from falling forward. When she was standing up straight again, he grabbed the frame, righted it while reaching froward just a little, and quickly let go of her just as soon as she was standing upright and safely holding it's handlebars.

"Thanks." Firestorm flashed a grateful little grin at him. Slowly she moved herself toward the large rocks that blocked the path. And carefully she sat herself down on top of the smallest of them. Her smile faded then as she looked up at the other bot.

"You are gooood bot, Soundwave," she said, speaking much muster than usual, and so clearly trying harder to be clearly understood because of it. "Youhave goooood spark. Don'let anyone say ya don't." She smiled again and went on. "Iknew eet when firstsaw ya'on base..."

"Departure-... necessary," Soundwave said, finding a couple of words just as quickly as he possibly could.

"Soundwave?" Firestorm asked, concerned when he quickly spun on his heels so that he could look away from her entirely. But instead of giving any answer at all, he walked away with hurried steps.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Soundwave was busy, in the midst of an unrelenting session of training with his favoured punching bag, downstairs in the gym. He was sure a decent amount of time had passed while he trained, only because the slight tiredness of his boy and the dimming light seen through a window high in the far wall, told him so. But neither of those thing had come to bother him yet and so he just kept on going, kicking the bag, in long spinning kicks, changing directions sometimes often and sometimes less so, and with punches thrown in here and there between.

His own mood, confused without and certainly of why, disturbed him. And all hope of punching and kicking away his confusion, back into the back of his mind, was fading rapidly the more he tried. At first he'd paid a visit to the blaster range, tucked away behind the gym. He'd finally bothered to key in his name, as the Auotbots had asked him in vain to do so many times before. And he'd fired near perfect, on three rapid fire training rounds in a row. But his restless confusion, which quickly began to boarder on anger, had not yielded even then. And Soundwave did not care much for weapons, aside from his use of blasters. So he'd moved on to his much favoured unarmed combat training instead.

The sound of a door sliding open on its track, far across the gym, registered somewhere at the back of his processor. And Soundwave slowed his pace just a little, surprirsed to find himself at least slightly pleased with the idea of possible competition from an Autobot looking for a match. But instead of footsteps, as he may have expected, he heard the light whirring of a strange electric motor.

"Knockout – visiting the training gym for particular reason?" Soundwave questioned, without much thought, as he spun once quickly to the left and kicked the bag three times rapidly before turning to his right. He looked over a should just long enough to see the near dismayed look on the red bot's faceplate, before he issued the bag one fast punch and spun again.

"I do use the gym too you know," Knockout said. Soundwave knew from both his tone and the look he bore, that he had probably come close to at least mildly offending him in his own lack of social ability and tact. And silently he cursed himself for it, surprised at the same time with how much he felt it mattered. But Knockout only rolled just slightly closer to him, on the mobility cart. And for a second, he just chattered on, confidently, "I do rehabilitation in here sometimes with Ratchet and Arcee. The landing mats have their uses, because they're soft and safe to roll on, or sit on. Place is handy for kicking balls too, or throwing and catching... Of course I came down here tonight because I figured I'd find you here."

"Knockout – looking for me? Inquiry – reason?" Soundwave kicked the punching bag again, twice, before one more fast turn and three more kicks.

"Just wanted to check up on you, make sure you're still alright...," Knockout paused then and his face-plate took on a strange, and bewildered look. Slowly, he continued on, his tone strangely cautious now. "Soundwave, you never were the easiest bot to read. It's that whole hidden optics and face-plate situation of yours... but still, somehow you don't look so good tonight."

"Inquiry – why?"

"If you were fighting an enemy for real right now, he'd surely be more than dead already."

"Intent – training."

"Overly intense training, even for you." The swinging punching bag was stopped on an outward swing. And Soundwave saw, to his surprise, that Knockout had managed to stop it himself, blocking its swing with his arm extended, reaching up, and his hand in a loose kind of fist. "Keep that up and you're going to hurt yourself." Knockout's optics looked intently through Soundwave's face-shield, managing to roughly find his hidden optics behind it. His expression turned slowly to one of true concern, and he sat still on the cart, letting the punching bag swing away from him, and back again slower, before he awkwardly stopped it again.

"Firestorm – said I am good," Soundwave explained suddenly. And it was only after he had spoken that he fully understood what it was that he was so unsettled over to begin with.

"So?" Knockout's reply - and the tone in which he had spoken - made it all seem like it was so little, so unimportant.

"Firestorm – wrong. Soundwave – far from good. Terrible deeds – too great and many for redemption."

"I thought the same of myself when I first defected," Knockout answered, roughly repeating something he'd said a good while before, not long after Soundwave had first arrived in the Autobots' medbay. Hesitantly, he reached out, again with the stronger of his hands still in a fist, and gave the punching bag a couple of small hits. It was barely enough to even get the bag swinging, and the expression on his face-plate roughly seemed to indicate that he simply wanted to see if he could do it. With a tiny, awkward hint of a shrugging motion, he moved to hit the bag again. It was clear this time, he'd done so just about as hard as he could, and still it was barely enough to make the heavy thing swing even slightly.

"I remember how much I doubted," he continued slowly, and rolling the cart back a little. "How that little spark of goodness I sensed buried somewhere, almost long forgotten to survival in this ridiculous war, felt like it would never be enough to mean a thing. For everything I did, trying to make up somehow for some act of hate I'd once done, there were memories of six or seven more, worse than the first, waiting to convince me it was over for me. And I'd lay awake at nights, unable to recharge, wondering in the darkness, just how a simple change of opinion could be enough to change much more. I knew I could never go back. You know full well how that would have gone over for me. But so many nights I could not imagine how could possible go anywhere else either. So many nights of laying in the dark, terrified of everything, though to the pit if I'd ever admit it, wondering just what I'd gone and done. Finally I started to get closer to some of the 'bots. Until one day, Ratchet was a colleague and a mentor, 'Bee and Smokescreen were my racing buddies, Arcee was my greatest friend, and I was working as hard as I could to get ready for my Autobot loyalty pledge..."

Knockout did not seem to much like talking about certain aspects of his life, before the catastrophic failure of his processor anymore. He rarely mentioned anything by then beyond his life of doing just as much as he possibly could while confined to his motorized cart, with much of his body either greatly damaged or barely functional at all. He wanted so often, or at least it seemed so, to forget all about his street racing days, that he'd been so fast in a high performance automobile mode, that many bots could scarcely catch him. And just the fact that he had directly hinted at it now, was certainly not lost on Soundwave, who blinked his own damaged, hidden optics, in surprised emotion. But the mix of his own still lingering and growing frustration, and his utter lack of any needed social skill that might possibly have been relevant then, stopped him from saying a thing about it.

"Situation – different for me," Soundwave said instead, struggling to explain, struggling to socialize, struggling he felt with everything he barely even understood. He looked ahead of him, refusing to look down at the floor, though he strangely wanted to – a feeling he was certainly not used to.

"Have you given much thought to Ratchet's offer yet?" Knockout questioned, graciously changing the subject when Soundwave simply could not find the words to further explain himself in his confused edginess. "He and I have had a couple of good discussions on just how to best go about some possible repairs for you. Ratchet is confidant he could construct a fully functional face-plate for you. And you would have an at least almost normal appearance. The optics are the trickier thing. But with any hope of at least partly restored function..."

Knockout went on speaking for a moment more, but Soundwave could no longer comprehend what it was he was saying. His fellow defector meant well, and he knew that. But a strange anger, not unlike the feeling he'd been battling back with punches and kicks and earlier with a blaster, only this time far more intense then before came welling back up from somewhere within his frame. And just as quickly the anger was sheer rage. And before he could even act upon that in any way, for better or for worse, the rage became a strange and crushing despair. He stared for some long moments at the wall, directly across from him, across the training gym and close to the door which led out to the corridor, leading to the lift. Eventually he realized his entire body was trembling with his growing despair, and only then he understood it had been for moments already.

"Soundwave," Knockout said in obvious concern. And slowly, with small careful movements of his hand control, he moved himself on the cart to sit a little closer in front of his teammate.

"Soundwave – failed Cybertron," Soundwave said, managing with difficulty to find both his voice and just enough words to at least begin to explain himself.

"Well now, I hardly think the responsibility for an entire planet and its fate even fell on your shoulders," Knockout answered quickly. His tone sounded as though he was almost, but not quite making light of it. But still it was clear he spoke that way to prove a point. And Soundwave saw that point instantly, though still that hardly made anything any better. His despair hit harder still, and he turned his body away so that he could stand facing the back wall instead. Losing control of himself in any way, was something he had once prided himself on never doing. And now for at least the second time since he'd come to the Autobot base, he felt like he was losing it again, and the very thought only made him angry again through the growing despair.

Laserbeak had been hidden, recharging up in the rafters, above the gym – a favoured place, she had come to use regularly for its perfect built-in perches, while her master trained. And Soundwave felt her awaken again with the intensity of his emotions. This was the last thing he'd wanted – for her to realize his state for herself. And with urgency he tried in vain to block his own feelings from the telepathic link he shared with the little flighted bot. But already the wiser, Laserbeak leapt from her perch high above and flew a moment in small, tight, distressed circles up near the ceiling, before she swooped down abruptly to land – of all places – on the armrest of Knockout's mobility cart. Even seated perched again, her little grey wings flapped, raising and lowering again in her own despair, while she screamed quietly in confusion over what was she was to do, and awaiting orders that never came.

"You need to pay attention to her," Knockout's voice was urgent now, but not at all lacking in any tone of understanding either. And soundwave turned his head and upper body back around just enough to see that the damaged bot had managed to pick up the bird, who had jumped to perch in despair, on his stronger arm. And moving slowly, he held out his arm, with her still perched and screaming her own unease, in clear hope that Soundwave would take her, because of course that's what she wanted him to do. "You are the only bot who has any ability to really work with her."

Soundwave's despair increased tremendously, as he realized that in his own emotion, his own growing panic over that, he had all but forgotten his own much loved small dependant. The guilt of simply that alone was enough to force the tears he'd been fighting back, to spill from his optics, well hidden behind his face-shield. And quickly, now barely daring to look at his damaged fellow defector again, he held out his left arm, to realize only then how badly it was trembling, and let the bird perch immediately on it. She flew a second later to his chestplate, and on her own accord, she docked herself, flat against his docking port, where their sparks could pulse close together.

"Plan of action – to kill Megatron," Soundwave said after a moment, looking back toward the far back wall again with his back to his teammate. Where once he could barely find a single word suddenly he could barely stop himself from speaking, as strangely the words came from what seemed like nowhere. "I believed in the cause we all fought for. Freedom, a right of any bot to be anything he wanted. Soundwave – discarded by Cybertronion council. Thrown to the fighting pit. And they laughed and cheered the day someone nearly killed me, destroyed my face-plate... A new cause to fight for... a bot to follow, who spoke of a place for even one like me. I vowed that no one should be a slave, after I myself had been one. And eventually I understood our own leader would himself enslave entire worlds... For years I saw the energon shed, I watched our people die, slaves to the war, to fear, to Megatron himself. And I made up my mind to play the loyalist of officers, to say little least I say too much, and one day I would kill him."

"No one had any idea..." Knockout said. His voice was quiet now, and Soundwave knew full well that the red bot was clearly shocked to the core by what he was learning. He wondered why he saw fit to say so very much at all. But he could barely think with enough logic to even try to reason it out. And a sense of crushing guilt formed out of his still growing despair.

"I won't say it doesn't matter anymore," Knockout continued. And the bot, once so known only for showing off in his own pride, and thus known as much for blurting out the most insensitive and simply immature of comments, showed great concern and understanding in his careful words. "Of course it matters. It might always matter. But it doesn't matter quite so much now. With the war officially over, Megatron in chosen exile, the peace treaty signed..."

"Starscream – waged war too long after it should have been the end of it," Soundwave explained. His frustration and sadness reflected now in the tone of his voice. He could hear it too clearly, and he didn't like it. He'd never liked it. He tried so hard to avoid it, keep his tone even on the rare occasions he chose to speak at all, hide the contents of his emotional mind behind a calm and collected near-monotone. But this time, he could not help it, and he liked it less than ever. "Reason for his actions – partly my fault."

"Starscream was a few scraps short of a junkpile on a good day," Knockout countered quickly, with a laugh clearly meant to lighten the mood again. "Quite simply insane on a bad day." The small electric motor that powered his cart whirred a little as he wheeled slightly closer to sat behind his teammate. "I can't see how the frag that was your fault."

"I..." Soundwave sputtered a moment, helplessly. He tried to bring his speech back to his typical pattern, which he knew baffled others, but still he was most comfortable with it. But the words would not be forced into a pattern, and he could barely think besides. "I didn't save him."

"He and his brothers – barely more than younglings when they arrived within Decepticon ranks." Soundwave struggled now just to go on explaining it all and making some manner of sense, as tears of coolant poured against his will down his hidden face-plate, and the room began to spin badly all around him. "I made myself believe that Starscream had only been lucky. He had beaten the odds... moved through the ranks... had been handpicked for greatness. But from the start of the war he was the primary target for Megatron's uncontrollable anger, the greatest blame for every insignificant failure, beaten more than once to near death for the master's own insecurities. I made myself ignore that, because I convinced myself he was still fortunate, as next in line for command. Even when I eventually knew how horrible it had gotten... how he had been violated not only in frame and processor, used as no bot should ever be... I failed to do a thing..."

Soundwave stopped speaking then, rather abruptly, because on some level, through all of his trembling sobs of despair, he realized that Knockout, still behind him, had turned the cart around to face the door, He turned his head just a little, and after a second or more to blink away his out of control confusion, he was horrified to see the door to the gym now sitting half open. The sound of slow and small footsteps registered next, and blinking back a new stream of tears, he saw Knockout's bondmate, the Autobot, Arcee cross the training gym, with a look of alarmed concern over her face-plate.

"Soundwave?" she questioned, speaking slowly as she continued across the padded mats on the floor of the gym. She come to stand beside her mate, and looked from one of the bots to the other, with a mix of concern and confusion clear in the tone of her voice. "Is everything alright?"

"It's all good," Knockout said quickly, answering for him. And for that Soundwave was oddly grateful. The red bot turned to his mate and smiled a little, however shaken he must surely have been. "Soundwave and I were just talking a few things over."

"Is there anything I can...?" Arcee clearly meant to offer her help, and Soundwave became aware of shaking his head at her helplessly after he had already began doing it.

He knew she very quickly said something more. But her strangely her words were suddenly muddled into little more than utter nonsense in his processor. And the room, which had never yet stopped spinning, began to spin faster and Soundwave saw his own vision turn to blackness. There were hurried little footsteps as the small Autobot ran the few steps closer to him, and the sense of falling, before he felt the impact of his knees, and finally his head against the landing mats. After that there was nothing at all.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"It's too bad about Soundwave..." Arcee mumbled slightly. She shook her head a little, but she didn't look up from her position kneeling on the floor of her shared living space, where she was busy fumbling with the charge cord of Knockout's cart, and trying to plug it into the wall. She held a slightly fussing Cybershock, balanced somewhat awkwardly, against the left side of her frame, held by a left arm, while Arcee's free hand fought with the cord and and outlet.

"Ratchet says it looks like Soundwave simply collapsed from emotional shock," Knockout answered, from his place on top of their recharge station. He sat up on it, his weak left hand still wedged lightly against the side mounted grab-bar, and his right free at his side. He had not laid down yet that night at all, having transferred to the recharge station in a seated position as usual when he'd been helped. And this time, he'd just stayed sitting up. "Too many emotions, too quickly and too little understanding of it all. Processor overloaded, he panicked, and out he went."

Arcee stood up from the floor, her fight with the the charging cord won. And the plopped the baby playfully onto the still empty side of the recharge station, where she bounced lightly to land laying on her back laughing.

"It never does seem to be easy for defectors," Arcee mumbled, sadly. She picked the baby up again, long enough to sit down in the place the little one had occupied. And promptly she set her down again, to lay between her and her mate. "It's been just as hard on Soundwave as it once was on you."

"Was I ever in such a bad state?" Knockout asked. His tone sounded both doubtful and almost horrified. But the look in his optics made her made wonder if he had truly forgotten, at least a fair amount.

"It was pretty bad once," Arcee confirmed. Her tone was compassionate, and she smiled assurance at him, as she spoke. "I still remember a night you completely lost consciousness in the middle of terrible flashbacks. Oddly that was in the training gym too..."

"I regained awareness leaning against your chest panel, with your arms around me," Knockout answered slowly as he thought back. It seemed like he remembered the whole incident she spoke of now himself. And he looked almost horrified at remembering it now. "I'd been crying all over your body armour, but I couldn't seem to stop... that was terrible of me. And I barely knew you then..."

"I never held it against you," Arcee assured him quickly. She opened her storage compartment, and reached in to grab a toy, which she'd been storing for the baby. She handed it to her grinning little one, before she reached back in there, dismayed and shaking her head a little, at finding two more small toys she had forgotten all about. With another shake of her head, she tossed them both easily onto the nightstand. "If anything I think I just felt so bad for you then. Not pity or anything. I could never do that. But bad. Understanding for real then, just how seriously complicated it was to change sides and mean it..."

"I've been trying hard to convince Soundwave it'll all be worth it in the end," Knockout muttered slowly. He let go the the grab-bar he'd been holding onto, sat another moment, fully supporting himself in a seated position, and then deliberately he fell back to lay comfortably instead. "Worth the confusion, the flashbacks, the panic... just to see what's on the other side of all that. It's funny... all the years I served along side him on the warship. I thought he was unshakable..."

Cybershock, still laying between the two much larger bots on their recharge station, rolled herself over with a content little sound, so that she could lay a moment snuggled against her creator's frame. Her tiny silver hands reached playfully for one of his, and when he extended his much stronger right one, the one closest to her, she grabbed for his fingertips happily. The youngling would be sitting up soon, completely on her own. Arcee saw that much in the way she already tried to pull herself up to sitting, using Knockout's body for balance, and clearly needing him less and less now in order to do so. She was almost sad just to think of it, because she knew now that her child would sit fully unaided before her mate could do so. And she knew he'd set the goal of doing so first. But still he seemed not to mind at all, as he watched the child, smiling at her efforts.

"No bot is truly unshakable, or immune to emotions," Arcee mused. She got off the recharge station, and spent a couple of quick moments folding back the little pink blanket inside the youngling basket, turning off lights and closing a window she had left open across the room. When she turned back again to look at her little family in the now near darkness of the room, she saw the youngling dozing in near recharge, against her creator, with his stronger arm holding her close to him.

"She was tired after all," Arcee said, with a quiet little laugh, so as not to wake the little one again, as she carefully lifted her into her arms, turned around, and placed her gently into her recharging basket. "You can always get her to sleep without even trying."

"What can I say?" Knockout's laughing grin spread quickly over his face-plate, and his red optics shown brightly. "I'm a bot of many hidden talents. Turns out I'm also a youngling whisperer."

Arcee laughed quietly under her intakes in the darkness, as she wiggled a little on the recharge station to be closer to her bondmate's frame. And she wrapped her arms around him happily, letting the heat of his body warm her comfortably. His stronger hand reached toward hers, and she took it quickly, smiling as she wiggled even closer.

"Hey Knockout," she said after a moment. And her face-plate took on a serious look that she sure he could have read at once, had it not been still nearly entirely hidden against his shoulder panel. "What did Soundwave mean tonight with his comment about Starscream and violation?"

"I promised I would never tell anyone," Knockout said. He voice was suddenly quiet, and he looked at his mate with confused conflicted optics. "Starscream made it more than clear he would tear out my spark if I ever let anyone find out about any of this."

"Any of what?" Arcee begged gently, wanting to understand what it was that suddenly seemed like it was so important. "What was it he was so willing to threaten your life to keep hidden forever? Knockout, Starscream is dead. And as hard as it still is to believe, he will never bother any one of us again. And his threats mean nothing now."

"Until today, I had no idea even Soundwave knew a thing about this. Though I don't suppose it should surprise me. There were no secrets Soundwave didn't seem to know..." Knockout paused a moment, thinking intently before he went on speaking again. And slowly, with obvious hesitation he began to recount details.

"One day years ago, not long before Cybertron fell, I was on shift alone in my medical bay on board the warship. It was actually quiet for once. I remember I was just standing next to a sink, cleaning a few tools I'd used that day while preforming surgery on some officer whose name escapes me, and I'm not sure I ever actually knew in the first place. I was about ready to close up shop, hit the showers and apply some wax, when three vehicons come running in through the door, with Starscream, who a couple of them were doing a mostly decent job of not dropping. One of the them managed to explain, that they'd found him on the floor on their way to report for the night shift. Just laying, inexplicably unconscious, face down in a high traffic main hallway close to the largest of the wash stations. I'll never know just how many bots must have passed by their own second-in-command, while he lay unconscious in the hallway. And knowing that bunch most only must have laughed and just stepped nicely over him. But there was energon all over him, the troopers...the floor. And it was pretty obvious he could easily have died if those three hadn't seen reason and brought him to me.

"Those troopers all swore to me they had no clue what had happened or how he'd ended up on the hallway floor. And I believe they truly didn't. But I knew right away that Megatron had obviously beaten him nearly to death. I'd treated him for the results of Megatron's psychotic anger too many times to count already. But this time he'd taken it to a whole new level. Starscream had obviously either run for it from somewhere nearby, only to collapse in that hallway… or he'd been thrown there… discarded like junk and left for the crew to laugh at… A hard kick to the head, probably more then once, was more than likely what must have knocked him out, and his head was obviously damaged. There were multiple other injures. Mostly things I'd come to associate with brutal and senseless assaults. But his speak chamber was also bleeding energon from the seams of his chest panel, and not just a little bit. That was the most pressing of any problem he may have had that night, so I forced open the panel to begin there... it barely took any forcing at all, pretty much opening on its own. That combined with energon bleeding told me at once that this was not good. I knew in that second that I was in almost well over my head."

Knockout paused then, in the middle of the story he was relaying, so that he could turn his head in the direction of Cybershock's little basket on his mate's side of the recharge station. He could not quite see her inside the basket from a laying position, but he listened for any noise that would tell him she might have woken up. And even when he heard nothing he gestured once with his optics toward the basket. Understanding his concern and his silent cue at once, Arcee half sat herself up and peeked over the side of the small basket to check on the baby. She smiled a little and nodded her head a bit when she'd found her still in sound recharge. And slowly she lay herself back down with her frame pressed against her mate's.

"What happened?" she questioned slowly.

"He was carrying newsparks," Knockout said, quietly. "Three of them. That's common for his kind for some reason. Many, though not all, carry triplet newsparks. Two of them, I could tell at once, had been extinguished. There was nothing I could do. But the third, a tiny femme-spark, nowhere near ready to live in a frame yet, was alive, and my medical programming told me I had to try… For a moment I hoped that he would simply continue to carry her and all would be well. But she was detaching early, probably because of the beating that had killed her brothers. I didn't have a frame built and ready of course, and she was so small she'd never have integrated even if did. So I comm'd for Breakdown and when he made it to the medbay as fast as he could, I told him how to assemble a makeshift life support tank from a discarded energon system and some spare parts I knew were laying around. And I told him exactly how to do it while I repaired my still very damaged patient. Anyone who's ever called Breakdown stupid has no idea how fast he built that tank for me, and how perfectly he did. Well, sure enough the newspark did fully separate eventually. It was inevitable. And with little more than blind hope, I put her into the tank, filled it with enriched energon, and turned on the warming pad.

"Starscream woke up in a couple of days. And it turned out he'd never known he was carrying at all. Still, he grieved the loss of the sons he'd never known existed until they didn't. But his tiny daughter was still alive and he loved her at once. I told him she may or may not live and he insisted that she would. That she had to because he said so, and he told her that very thing as he sat by her tank for hours. He asked me how it would be until she couple live in a frame and I told him at least twenty days. He decided that gave us a good twenty days to build one, and when he asked me to build it for her and I said I would, he insisted I build a shining little silver frame with beautiful blue wings. Starscream made it clear to me that he knew Megatron would kill her if he knew about her. He never explained to me exactly why, but It was pretty clear than that our mighty 'lord and master' had once had his way with him, and would go as far as to murder a youngling to hide what he had done from his troops. And so I made a plan. I would help Starscream escape with the little one once she was in her frame. That was of course if she lived. I told him to run straight to the Autobots. It would of course require his defection, but I knew no Autobot would ever turn away a defector on the run with a brand new youngling in his arms. He could raise her and she could live."

Still pressed tightly against his frame, Arcee stared at Knockout in disgust and terror as he spoke. And when her stare turned to rage that flashed across her optics, he stopped speaking a moment, sure that she might just look for the closest thing to throw at a wall. But she didn't, and soon enough coolant tears filled both of her optics, as she looked at his again, encouraging him without a word, to go on.

"He named her Skyspark. I warned him more than once to please not hope for much. To love her as long as he had her, but understand that she had little chance of living. He shoved me hard against a wall, nearly clawed my face-plate in his rage and told me to never say such horrible things. For one more day he lived his dream and we reviewed our plan for him to run. And that night Skyspark was gone. No reason for it really, aside from the fact that she was just too small to make it. I believe that was the night Starscream became truly insane, full of nothing but rage and hate, more determined than ever to overthrow Megatron. And after that night I no longer bothered trying to talk him out of it."

Arcee sat up then on the recharge station, and looked down at her bondmate with the true shock of realization quickly dawning on her. She looked again at her sleeping youngling, and that was just enough to pull her away from a steady growing sick feeling in her tank.

"The day I last talked spoke with Starscream," she explained slowly, as a growing rage replaced her sickness, and she understood at once that it was now not directed at all toward the now dead bot that she had once hated more than any other, "not an hour before he died... he was asking me about our youngling. He said he'd wished he could have met her, and he looked so strangely sad about it. I let him see her picture. There seemed little harm by then. It might have made him happy at the end of his life to see the first child born on Cybertron after the war... Our little Cybershock reminded him of his lost youngling. It makes so much sense now. Looking at her picture, he must have thought of everything that Skyspark would have been if only she'd survived."

"Yeah..."

"I had no idea…"

"No one knows. Well Breakdown knew, but he's gone too. And Soundwave of course..."

"It's so strange to think of it but if things had only been a bit different. If she'd somehow lived, Starscream might just have been an Autobot, or at least not a deadly enemy. We both know Optimus Prime would have taken him in a second. You're right about that. And youngling to speak of or not, he always secretly dreamed of a day Starscream might defect."

"It may just seem unbelievable to you, but Starscream might just have been a wonderful carrier. She lived only days and she never even had a frame, but that newspark was probably the only thing he ever truly loved in life."

"It's not so unbelievable." Arcee shook her head. Cybershock began to whimper slightly in her basket, and Arcee reached over to gently rock the little basket from side of side, until the youngling's low whimpers faded again and she dozed back to recharge.

The Autobot laid back down then, to press her body tight against her bondmate's. And with both her arms around him again, she looked around in the darkness, recharge seeing like it would be impossible. And she saw the very same in Knockout's still wide open bright optics.

"It's strange," she mumbled, quiet as ever so as not to wake their baby. "Starscream told me that same day, he'd known for years that Soundwave was blind without all that technology of his. The two of them... they may have been rivals... there may have been resentment and dangerous competition, and in the end yeah it turned deadly. But still somehow they protected each other's secrets..."

 **Notes/ The last scene... I hope I didn't go too far. I'm surprised with myself for writing that, because I realize such things in fanfiction tend to greeted with very mixed opinions. But I simply wished to logically explain both Starscream's insanity and the utter brokenness that made him choose to die - and Soundwave's devastating guilt, that was triggered when someone called him good.**


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes/ this one is short. But it's kind of a bonus chapter. This one would not leave me alone, for the most part, it pretty much wrote itself. Hence, the little update in only a couple of days. And this is emotionally all over the place again. Haha, be warned.**

After dumping the oily water from the baby washtub down the wash station drain, Arcee crossed her small shared living space, with a her very wet youngling in her arms. When her foot clipped the corner of a shelving unit, and her knee banged hard against it, he muttered a most indecent obscenity before she could stop herself. Limping badly the rest of the way toward the recharge station, she clamped her hand over her mouth, more than well aware that Cybershock would soon begin to recognize such language, and may just one day copy it herself.

"Oh, that's so not funny," Arcee exclaimed to the baby, when Cybershock burst into giggles, more than likely over the look on her carrier's face-plate.

Arcee's foot came down not two steps later, on the wrong end of a rigid metal youngling toy, and she forced back a second round of cursing, as she went to involuntary hopping on the foot that didn't hurt, while she struggled not to loose her grip on the wet and squirming baby.

"Okay, most definitely not funny," she exclaimed in near disbelief, when Cybershock's giggles became little squeals of laughter.

"Well Cybershock clearly disagrees with you," Knockout said from his place, sitting up on their recharge station, and barely even holding on to either of his grab bars. "She thinks you're hilarious."

The way he said that simple thing, the all too casual tone he used to do so, and that silly joking smirk on his face-plate, it only served to antagonize Arcee. And without a second's warning, she had bent to grab the offending younging toy – which of course needed to be picked up anyway -and flung it at him with a smirk of her own.

"Hey," Knockout exclaimed with with a laugh under his intakes. He didn't manage to catch the thrown thing of course. After an endless time of trying, he could still barely catch anything, and that was when he was expecting it to be thrown. Instead it only hit his body armour, across his lower left shoulder panel, bounced and hit the recharge station. He smiled though with a shake of his head. "So we're playing that game now?"

He managed to pick up the little toy with his stronger hand, from where it had landed near him, and he waved it in the air a little, as if to hint that he would throw it right back at her. But Arcee shook her head just slightly, brushing off the mock threat, knowing fully well that he would never do it because she held the baby. Cybershock burst again into squealing laughter, quite clearly certain her creators were both quite insane. And she clapped her little hands with amusement, as Arcee dropped her onto the towel she'd set out read on the recharge station, and began to quickly dry her off.

Before she could pick her back up again, taking her along to return the towel to the wash station, Cybershock rolled quickly to the left, and just as quickly she did so again, making her way lengthways across the recharge station, in silly little baby barrel rolls, and laughing hysterically while she did it.

"Get back here," Arcee cried, alarmed at the child's sudden speed, and she gasped with relief, when Knockout's right foot, flung to the side just enough and just in time, stopped the baby before she could get to the edge.

"Good save," Arcee said, laughing despite her dismay. She scooped up the youngling again at once, held her in both arms as she squirmed to get down again, and used a couple of her fingertips to grab the towel from its crumpled heap on the recharge station. She took two steps back, moved to turn around, and promptly tripped right over the stand that supported the youngling's recharging basket.

"We are running out of room in here," she mumbled in frustration, using one hand to steady the basket and stand before the whole thing fell over, and thus struggling again with the squirming baby one-handed.

Indeed as Cybershock grew slightly older, her own needs had grown greater it seemed. And slowly but surely her creators had accumulated a still growing collection of baby things for her. A play mat was required, where she could lay playing on the floor, and to set that up in the far corner of the room, beneath the window, had meant moving the shelving unit closer to the music player. And then her own growing collection of toys and blankets, and datapads filled with pictures and stories and silly simple music she so loved, meant a need for her very own shelving unit to store such things. And that had been shoved into tightly against the wall close to the only place the mobility cart could park to charge. A little toy box, built and gifted to her by Bulkhead was something she could not yet use, but still it took up space against another wall, and had meant the recharging basket be moved two feet toward the centre of the room. Slowly but surely baby things were filling up a room already more crowded then it should have been because of mobility equipment.

"Cybershock is old enough to recharge by herself now," Knockout said. "She could very well be happy in her own room."

"You don't suppose," Arcee mumbled, with another shake of her head, to shake off annoyance she knew was misplaced. His statement was one of the obvious and she knew he knew that. But what could they do?

"I'm sorry," she muttered, turning to her mate with a smile of sincere apology. And with a smile on his own face-plate Knockout used his right hand to place his left back against his grab bar, so that he could hold it tightly again to hold himself up with full stability. And promptly he reached out to her with his right hand extended. He hugged her tightly with his stronger arm, when she leaned close to him, and held into her a moment with their youngling tight between them, wordlessly forgiving her for the slightest frustration she fully wished to blame herself for.

"You probably want to get up," Arcee mumbled with understanding into her mate's armour, her annoyance quickly fading. And she realized how late it was into the morning.

"Yeah," Knockout said smiling. Slowly he let her go, mostly because the youngling wedged between them, had begun to squirm yet again.

"This base is not close to being filled to capacity," Arcee mused out loud, while her processor thought over just who to best call for help, wondering who it was that might not be otherwise busy at that moment. "The room next to us on the right, is empty. Maybe no one would mind if we took a second room for Cybershock..."

"Can you bring my cart over here?" Knockout asked suddenly, bringing her back from her musing as he gestured to the space next to his side of the recharge station.

Quickly she pushed it over, kicking the charging cord out of the way under the shelving unit, sure, considering the morning she'd so far had, that she would only trip over that next. She watched as her bondmate, still holding tightly to his grab-bar with his weak left hand, using the wrist hooked through the bars, to stabilize himself somewhat awkwardly, threw his right arm over his frame so that he could reach with his stronger hand over the side of the recharge station. With somewhat of an obvious struggle to do it, he managed to pull up on the right armrest of his cart, so that he could then drop it down, so it sat folded near the handbrake. Arcee wanted to help him, and for a moment it was all she could do not to hurry around the recharge station in order to drop the armrest for him – whatever his reason may have been for wanting to move it in the first place. But she knew well the look she saw in his optics. The look that told her to let him try. So she stood, holding the baby, smiling at her mate, hoping beyond all hope that he would not fall off their recharge station, and sighing with silent relief when he didn't.

"Bulk' should be around this morning," she said, when Knockout sat himself back up straight with the aid of the grab-bar. "I'll comm him to help you up."

"I don't think we need him," Knockout answered, surprisingly A strange smile flashed across his face-plate. His optics went then to his mobility cart siting well placed beside him, and Arcee understood to her dismay exactly why he had dropped its armrest. "I think... I think I can do it myself."

"Make fragging well sure your handbrake is locked," Arcee reminded him. Her processor cried silently that her advice should actually have been, 'wait for Ratchet to help you with this,' or 'practice this in rehab.' But Knockout did things in his own time. He always had. And if she told him not to try, he'd only laugh it off and ignore her anyway. Arcee turned quickly to plop Cybershcok down in her recharging basket, a place she was perfectly safe, and quickly she ran around to the other side the recharge station, ready to help if she needed to, and warning nervously, "don't you dare let go of your grab-bar until you're sure you've got your balance again."

Knockout looked like he might just say something to her. But he didn't. Instead he just nodded a confidant nod, and with a move he had only just begun to practice in daily rehabilitation, he used his right foot to bump his left leg hard off the recharge station he was still sitting on, under the grab-bar, and over the side of the cart. The placement of the grab-bar itself was an ideal placement for use in simply sitting himself up. But in this new situation it was clearly awkward. When another bot helped him in transferring to the cart, someone would simply drop the bar with a locking latch underneath it, so that it came to sit folded near the floor. He could not simply drop it himself though, partly because he felt he might fall, and mostly because he was sitting partly under it. So instead he pulled his stronger leg underneath it too, following the first, let that foot drop to the cart's footrest, and supported just as much of his own weight as he could, however little the might have been, before his left hand let the bar go, and the right, reaching so awkwardly now over the left, grabbed the cart to balance himself.

"That actually worked," Arcee exclaimed. The intake she'd been holding was finally released as a loud sigh that turned quickly to a laugh of amazement.

"You appear... shocked by that," Knockout's reply, the tone in which he spoke as all too matter of fact. And that only caused Arcee to burst out laughing, while she shook her head, and tried to mutter that she was though at the same time she wasn't.

Knockout was entirely capable by then of course, of buckling himself into the cart with his lap belt, or at least he was most of the time, assuming he could reach both ends of the thing and was not siting on either one. And he'd even taken recently to taking his own safety belt off during extended periods of siting on the cart while it was not moving. But still, determined to help him, to be of at least some use that moment, Arcee moved to lean over so that she soul grab the belt and buckle him in. And he simply let her, waving assent with a motion of his hand, understandably tired simply from moving on his own, and taking a moment to recover.

"Ready to roll?" she asked, smiling, as he moved, somewhat awkwardly as ever to put his left hand onto his hand control, in order to drive the cart. She hurried back across the room, to retrieve the youngling, who despite no real understanding of how significant a thing her creator had finally accomplished, grinned a wide grin and giggled hysterically in response to both of her parent's happiness.

"Ready to roll," Knockout confirmed with a grin, just as soon as Arcee had placed the baby in her favoured place on his lap where she would stay while he drove.

Knockout, driving the cart forward, toward the door leading out to the passageway beyond, had barely started moving, when a strange loud and unexpected squeak under his machine made him stop in surprise.

"What the...?" Arcee mumbled, close behind him.

Knockout backed up, slowly and careful, and Arcee watched and listened carefully, concerned for any number of possible odd problems with her mate's much needed mobility cart. The machine backed up just fine, the wheels and the hand control seemingly fine as ever. But sure enough the thing that had squeaked, did so again as he rolled backwards.

"Back up a little more," Arcee said, shaking her head with a tiny laugh, as she looked down with concern at the bottom of the cart. "There's something under your front wheel."

When he backed up just enough, she reached around and underneath the right front tire of the mobility cart. She stood up again, shaking her head slightly as she held up one of Cybershock's tub toys, now quite clearly busted, and the one small toy the youngling had been given that had contained a squeaker. She understood at once that she must have accidentally brought the thing with her from the wash station, bundled in the towel, and she'd flung it accidentally across the far too crowded room, when she'd struggled with the wet and squirming youngling.

"You realize Ratchet might just have your head, for that independent transfer move of yours, right?" Arcee said, as she walked behind down the corridor behind her mate, pausing only a second to toss the tub toy, broken beyond hope of repair, into a trash bin. But she was nevertheless laughing and proud, and her joking tone indicated that so clearly. Her tone turned serious then as she continued on. "You could easily have fallen on your face and possibly hurt yourself."

"I can't live my life afraid of falling," Knockout answered. And to Arcee's dismay, he turned the cart around suddenly, only to began driving down the hallway at low speed in reverse, grinning with confidence – or more than likely, overconfidence – as he did so. He gave his close approximation of a shrug of his shoulders and rolled on – still backwards – smiling at her. "Yeah I might fall one day. I have fallen already... a lot. Surely you remember just how many times I ended up flat on the landing mats in the training gym, just trying to stay sitting up. Or the many falls from benches in the common room, and those of course were always much worse. I've come to feel like I'd much rather try; and maybe I'll fall, but at least I'll still have been trying when I did."

Arcee wanted to say something in reply to his words. She wanted to tell him how his motivation made her proud, but then she was sure he already knew. She wanted to warn him again to be careful, to always take a few good risks, because that was how one made progress, but to never be reckless with risks either. And she was just as sure he knew that too.

"Do you have even the slightest idea where you're actually going, driving backwards like that?" she questioned, with another laugh, settling on that question instead.

"Vaguely, yes," Knockout answered. He gave a bright grin at her. But he was still looking right at her, instead of even trying to see a thing behind him – not that he possibly could have, had he been trying. "I know this hallway. I've used it daily for ages already... I could do this with my optics closed. And I know there's a bend coming up, here..."

He turned the cart, still in reverse of course, far too late to round the sharp turn he'd been talking about. And he smacked backwards into a wall roughly the archway he should taken, and the door to Ratchet's living space, which was in the passageway that continued on past the turn.

"Or... possibly not," he mumbled, shaking his head and laughing off embarrassment at his own poor judgment.

Cybershock, who'd been sitting in his lap the whole while he'd carried out his ridiculous antics, may well have been startled badly by the sudden hard impact. And for a second Arcee worried that she would cry because of it. Fully expecting just that, she moved closer to her mate and his cart, intending to quickly grab the baby. But before she could take a single step, Cybershock looked up at her, from her creator's lap. The bright grin clear across the baby's little metal face-plate, gave way to loud squeaks of laughter, while her legs kicked and she clapped her little hands together.

"Arcee!" Knockout exclaimed unexpectedly a moment later. He'd driven forward, away from the (thankfully undamaged) wall, and continued on a short ways down the corridor. His bondmate, who'd been behind him again, hurrying to catch up, so that she could walk beside him through the wider section of the corridor. But he stopped suddenly, lifting his foot from his power pedal entirely. And Acree, again to her great dismay, found herself nearly flying over the cart, after she'd banged right into the back of it, as he too quickly wheeled it around with the hand control to face her. His optics were so very bright with sudden excitement, that she wondered in all seriousness, if he had any idea at all that he had nearly tripped her up in the first place.

"How would you feel about living in our very own apartment together?" he asked quickly, his grin bright and filling his face-plate. "The rest of the bots left on this base are due to go to their own housing assignments any day now. I say we get ourselves on the list, get one of those apartments for ourselves. We'd have a balcony, and a view, Cybershock could have her own room. We'll paint it pink, fill it with toys and datapads, and her little basket can go by the window...!"

"We'd need an accessible wash station for one thing," Arcee said, brushing his enthusiasm off with a dismayed shake of her head. "Every door needs to be wide enough for your cart, not to mention adaptations to any cabinets and several things I can't even think off right this second..."

"Transferring by myself from recharge station to cart and back again was the one thing that truly held us back from independent housing," Knockout answered, smiling. "Now granted, I've done it one way, only once and I've never even tried to go back from cart to recharge station. I'll try that one tonight. And from here on, its all just practice makes perfect really. So it takes weeks longer for Ratchet to deem me good enough at this to be ready... It'll take far longer than that still to get the housing assignment, and then fit the place with accessibility adaptations!"

"You're... you're serious," Arcee said after a moment in which she had simply stared at him, blinking. And she realized for the first time, with her spark pounding away behind her chest panel, that indeed he was.

"Of course I'm serious," Knockout answered firmly. His silly grin was gone now, and his optics burned into hers with the familiar look he gave her, when he was truly determined to do something he wanted to do... when his mind was made up and he knew exactly what it was he wanted. His right arm and hand kept a firm hold on the baby, and they had since he'd left their living space with her. But he lifted the left one, just as much as he could up from his hand control, even if that was not much at all, motioning for his mate to give him her hand. And when she did so, he took it lightly, holding on just as well as he could do with uncoordinated and barely bending fingertips.

"We talked about our future home when we were first bonded," he said, gently reminding her. "You said we would never live on this base forever. That we'd have an apartment up in the high-rises, just like anybody else. And we wanted that so much. So let's do it, Arcee. I say our time is now."

"Okay" Arcee said back. The tone of her voice was lower now, serious and thinking all the while. "You keep it up with independent transfers for the next several days. Convince both me and yourself that you can really do this and you aren't going to hurt yourself, and we'll get us on the housing list."

"It'll be amazing," Knockout proclaimed. His level of enthusiasm was over the top again again. And he let go of Arcee's hand suddenly, placed his hand back on his hand control, whipped the cart about a full half turn to face the direction he should have been pointing to begin with, and raced off down the corridor, his youngling in his lap and his bondmate hurrying behind him. "It'll be just like we planned it. We'll have simple well matched furniture, tasteful grey paint for the walls, the hallway lined with photo displays. Arcee, it will ten times better then we we first planned it all, because we have our wonderful baby girl..."

"Knockout, watch out!" Arcee cried suddenly.

She had been in the midst of laughing happily at her bondmate's excitement. But she'd stopped that abruptly when a door flew open close by in the corridor and up ahead – a backdoor, that lead, in a round about way, eventually to the common room. Bulkhead hurried out out the door, huge feet tramping along with loud steady thumps and his face-plate turnied looking upward, clearly almost oblivious.

The cart was not very heavy a thing, relatively speaking; designed more for ease of handling and day to day transport than for anything involving any real power and force. And Bulkhead was a very large and stocky, solidly built bot indeed. But Knockout had been driving, perhaps faster than he should, have been indoors. And Bulk' had been in mid-step, when he'd walked right out into Knockout's path.

There was a loud ensuing bang, a nearly comical yowl of surprise from 'Bulk, a muttered string of curses from Knockout, and one more much louder bang, as time itself appeared to roll on in slow motion. Arcee, managed to stop the momentum of her own feet, just in time. And she watched in horrified dismay, as 'Bulk's feet left the floor entirely, the moment the cart's front and footrest hit his lower left leg, with an audible thump. The big green bot, clumsy as ever, managed somehow to fly right over top of the cart, which was still moving forward, while Knockout struggled, in shock, to lift his foot from the pedal quickly. Bulkhead landed behind it, close to face-down, and shaking his head in confusion, beside Arcee, who had barely managed to leap out of the way.

It looked of course, for a moment like the cart, might be knocked backwards. But it managed to rock just slightly on its wheels and steady again. 'Bulk slowly rolled himself over, winded slightly and groaning under his intakes, while Arcee, dazed, and shaking her head yet again, offered him a hand up. Her bondmate, still thankfully belted firmly into the cart with his lap belt, sat looking horrified, but otherwise okay. And it downed on her hard in the next second, that the youngling was still on her mate's lap, and she'd now taken one more, much more jolting impact. But after all that, Cybershock promptly burst out laughing again.

"And they say grounders never fly," Bulk exclaimed, with a chuckle of his own, a moment later, just as soon as he'd finished collecting his wits and standing upright.

"My fault, I fear," Knockout quickly admitted, still clearly embarrassed. He looked down at the youngling instead of making any optic contact with his teammate. "I was distracted and having a bit too much fun..."

"Well, I'm afraid, your too much fun morning might just be over for both of you," Bulk looked from Knockout to Arcee and back again, before he shook his head a little with a serious expression on his face-plate. "Ratchet's been hoping to talk to you guys. That mining disaster the other day... Looks like there's some bad news..."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Firestorm knew perfectly well that a clifftop was far from the safest of places for her to be all alone. And she stood so dangerously close to the edge, besides. But still, Firestorm didn't feel like it was innately as unsafe as she may have been told. She knew, at least in general, when she might reboot within a moment or two, and in that moment she certainly did not feel a single sign of a reboot coming on. The young bot, kneeling on the ground for greater ease of movement, shuffled just slightly closer to the cliff's edge, and dared a look right over, and down to the yellow field of sulphur far below.

The wind picked up, suddenly. And it whipped over the cliff on which she sat, blowing hard against her frame from behind her, as though threatening to simply push her right off the edge.

Windstorm was dead. Offline, and gone forever, when once he'd said he'd never leave her. She'd quickly decided already that of course she didn't blame him for it. It never had seemed right to her to blame the dead for dying. And it certainly wasn't his choice or his fault. Ratchet had called for her earlier. He'd brought her to the little office he kept, tucked away beside the medbay. He'd chuckled while she snatched up a sweet from the little dish he kept on his desk. And the way he kept on chuckling, wringing his hands while she saved the sweet in her storage compartment for later, she'd known then his news was bad news he was putting off sharing.

Firestorm had supposed for all of a second that she could just blame Ratchet for her loss. He was the medic after all. Why had he not done enough? And when he thought he had, why had he not still done even more? But he had done everything he could, and she truly knew that. The old bot had quickly come to remind her of the grand-creator she had never had - an old bot prone to bad moods and aggravated muttering, but most often laughed and hummed old songs and told old stories to anyone who would stop to listen to him, and who truly did love what he did in life. No. It wasn't his fault. And she supposed it wasn't anybody's fault.

Firestorm opened her storage compartment to retrieve the wrapped energon sweet she'd put in there earlier. Fumbling a little, her hands constantly shaking as usual, she unwrapped it and put it quickly into her mouth. Iron flavoured. She remembered just how Windstorm had always hated the flavor as much as she loved it. She recalled instantly the look he would give her every time she choose that flavor, one of her favourites, in the little sweet shop at the edge of the city – how his face-plate would all but scrunch up entirely, in an over the top expression of just how much the flavor put him off. And she surprised herself by chuckling just a little at the memory of him that she knew she would never forget.

The wind gusted again, harder even then before, and Firestorm scooted back a little, away from the cliff's edge, almost fearing that the wind might just cause her to overbalance and to stumble dangerously. And as she moved, shuffling with practised efficiency across the ground backwards, on her backside, over the howling of the wind she heard the beat of wings. She looked up toward the sky, leaning oddly half backward in order to feel safe in doing so. And finally she spotted Laserbeak, who flew in wide and steady circles high above the cliff top and the path leading up to it. Firestorm, despite the general sadness she felt in her spark at her great and crushing loss, felt at least a small bit of excitement at the appearance of the bird. And she waved a slow greeting, sure that Laserbeak could indeed understand the gesture.

A bot followed the bird a moment later, a flyer with a strange jet mode like nothing she had ever quite seen before on Cybertron. And at once, she noted the dark purple and navy blue colours. Soundwave. She'd known he was a flyer. It was just vaguely obvious in the shape of his body – plus, he had no wheels. But it was never quite so easy to imagine what his alt form might have looked like exactly. And she had never seen him fly. He landed near the place where she sat, transforming as he did, probably because hes imply lacked a runway. And with one arm instantly extended before him, he caught his bird as she dove toward him with a cheery shriek.

"Firestorm – desiring of companionship?" he questioned slowly, hesitantly, in that usual strange yet somehow intriguing speech pattern of his.

He sat down on the ground, his long legs bent in front of him,, when she slowly nodded up at him. And Laserbeak hopped about a bit on the ground herself, likely just exploring, before she dove for the sky again and made another wide circle overhead.

"I'm sorry... 'bout tha otherday," Firestorm said, finding her voice and mumbling a bit more than she suddenly might have liked. She looked up at the larger bot, finding the rough place is optics must have been behind that face covering of his, and looked intently as she spoke. "Iupset-ya somehow... didn't mean ta."

Soundwave said nothing. But he did nod his head just a little, and his hand made the slightest gesture of assent. And she knew his intent to brush off her apology as unneeded. She smiled a second in undersanding.

"What ya doin' uphere?" she questioned, mostly curious, but slightly concerned at same time.

"Soundwave – seeking out Firestorm."

"Ya lookin'for mee?" Firestorm blinked her optics in surprise. "Why?"

"Intent – expression of condolences." It was obvious what Soundwave was trying to say. But it somehow sounded so strange and awkward. And Firestorm knew at once that he must have known it too. Because he lowered his head a little, his own optics probably looking back at her now, and he tried again. "I have heard the news about your brother. I'm sorry to hear of it."

She'd heard such things all day. Heard how so many bots were somehow sorry, how the knew the news was so obvious bad news, how they would help her however they could. It wasn't that she wasn't grateful. She was. But she'd heard it and heard it again until she'd grown so tired of hearing it, and she dreaded having to hear it yet again. And in fact, she;d come to the cliff top, partly just to get away from needing to hear it anymore. Somehow though, in a way she could not begin to understand, from Soundwave of any bot, it was different. From him 'I'm sorry' felt like it truly meant something.

"Thanks," she mumbled at him, meaning it.

"Soundwave – capable of listening..."

"I... I jus'still shocked by this Iguess," Firestorm spoke slowly, thinking a minute about what she should say. Realizing then that thinking could never work when she tried to speak only from her spark. "Three days'go Windstorm went off'ta work. He didit evr'y day. Thisone seemed no differ'nt. That'day tho... he get hurt, and twodays later he's dead. Ratchet says he prob'ly didn't feel any'ting. He didn't wakeup after he went ta powerdown." She sat quiet on the ground a moment, just looking up at the other bot, before she finally gave sad shrug of her shoulders and smiled just a little with her own understanding. "That's some'tin Iguess. Windstorm's sparkchamber wasnearly crushed complete'ly. Ratchet sayshis spark just fianllystop... of course itdid. Hewas hurt toobad to make it. Still... Ihopedso much..."

"Hope – not always a bad thing," Soundwave said.

"You'right," Firestorm smiled slightly again.

"Inquiry – where will you go?"

Where would she go? She'd asked herself that question several times so far, and still the answer never seemed to come to her. The Autobots had made it clear that she could stay on their base, and no one ever have given a time frame on that offer. But it hardly seemed a viable option long term. The apartment she'd lived in, cared for by her brother? She not could possibly live there by herself. Far too dangerous and she knew it. No. The place would soon be empty, their belongings packed up and most of it sold, and the apartment then reassigned to someone new. Bumblebee and Speedbreaker had hinted already, that she might wish to stay a while with them in their small home. It almost made sense. 'Bee was a medical student. Surely he could help her in her next bad rebooting episode... But they had a youngling on the way, and their place really was too small... Bulkhead had implied quite pointedly yet vaguely that his own housing assignment was due to come up any day, and that he might have been considering taking on a housemate. Bulk' was decent and all, a bot would would protect her at any cost and she knew it. But he chummed around far too much with Wheeljack. And that bot, while surely he would never do her any harm either, was loud and vulgar, and just plain bothered her much of the time. Besides, Firestorm could not imagine large amounts of her time spent in the company of a couple of ex-wreckers and their 'wrecker behaviour.'

"I... Idunno tha'yet," Firestorm mumbled. A sudden fear welled up inside her frame as she realized she truly didn't know. "tha'choice I guess is really upta me now... tha' one and somany other...

"Life decisions - not yours to make before?"

Soundwave's sudden, unexpected question, made Firestorm pause for a long moment, while she considered the answer. Funny, she realized slowly; she never had before then.

"'Course theywere..." she started to explain. But then she stopped again, and started over. "Well, yes an'no. Windstorm took'care 'a'me. Iaways, did wha'he tell metoo, go where he' say. Didn' go outmuch... not myself. An' I've neva worked... I want'd too. I usedta beg'im lemme have a job like you have..." Firestorm shook her head a little then, confused, unsure entirely of how to feel about the whole matter, now that she;d explained it. Finally she looked back at Soundwave again and mumbled with assurance, "Windstorm, meantwell. Ever'one men'well... 'cause they care for m'safety."

"Firestorm – have your own life's ambition?' Soundwave's next question was so strangely worded. But Firestorm thought at once she understood exactly what he'd meant.

"Ya'mean like do'I have a dream?" She asked quickly, confirming.

He nodded silently, and she just sat for a moment, looking out over the cliff's edge as a new gust of wind kicked up fine bits of metallic dust around her.

"Paint'n finish detail," she mumbled, smiling as she spoke of this out loud. "Allbots need repaintin' event'aly. And who doesn'tlike some polishin' shine. Thisnew city doesn' have a placeyet for any'a'this."

"Firestorm – business minded."

"Yeah... I'guessso. Maybe... If I'been differ'nt, not be'danaged..."

"Inquiry – would you let that be the circumstance that stopped you?"

Firestorm looked back out over the cliffs edge again. And for a long and dragging moment, she just sat like that, thinking, questioning silently. She asked herself it it really did matter as much as she'd always just assumed. And she wondered to herself if maybe she could be someone on her own. Her optics travelled slowly back to Soundwave again, and she watched him slowly lower his head a little, obviously in some silent thought of his own. And she blinked up at him, confused, when he slowly moved to take the reflective darkened cover from it's place over his always hidden face-plate.

She blinked again, in shocked dismay, at the state of whatever remained of the bot's utterly destroyed face-plate. Parts of it were melted away to bare and charred wiring. The mouth was so close to completely ruined, she wondered if he could smile, and wondered in amazement at the idea that he could still speak perfectly well. One optic blinked against the sunlight and closed almost at once, while the other just stared without focus roughly in her direction.

"Wh... wha' happened to...?" Firestorm began to questionslowly, speaking with an even tone, and fearing only for her companion's own inner conflict – as she knew at once he surely must have had some then.

"Undefeated in the fighting pits of Kaon – One day I lost."

Firestorm, born and raised on a small refugee ship that sailed the stars, still new to life on her own home world, had been hidden away from the war. And the long age before that, was all just history to her. She'd heard a great deal of those times yes. But it was always only stories. Tales of conflict and corruption,and civil unrest, told by old bots that had left the planet when they were already old enough to remember it well. Sometimes she would listen intently, with wonder in her optics, and those times long past sounded so amazing, exciting and almost glamorous to her. Other times, she would feel only fear at the stories. And she'd sit at the feet of those old bots, hands over her closed optics, listening still because the fear of at all still thrilled her somehow.

She heard about the pits of Koan too, somewhere among so many other stories of the past. She'd thought it was sad, but still it was what it was, and it was also long past by then. But hearing of it now, hearing it from some bot who had lived it, survived with the damage that would effect his life forever... she felt a new feeling of rage at the very idea. Her rage gave way to tears of coolant, which mixed fast with new tears, for her now dead brother, who she knew might have taken her away by now, only to protect her from something he thought might scare her. And she cried a couple tears more at just understanding that if he were still here, if he had done just that, she might told him no that time.

"Ya fixable?" she questioned. The evenness of her voice considering her crying, surprised her. And she wiped quickly at the few stray tears with the back of one hand.

"Ratchet – believes repair possible."

"Tha'good news..." Firestorm smiled then, but Soundwave did not react. Strange. He'd not seemed to react in the least to her tears either.

"Greatest source of personal fear – invasive medical repairs."

"Oh. We... we'll workit'out. Ratchet canhelp ya. Hegood a'that..."

Soundwave said nothing in reply to that. But he did nod slightly in what she could assume may have been thanks. He moved then to place the covering he still held in his hand, back over his face-plate.

"Doesn' disturb me'any," Firestorm said quickly, trying hard to make sure he knew it truly didn't, because somehow it felt like that was important. But strangely from here, he shook his head, while his hand made a conflicting gesture that may have meant agreement. It mattered, yet it didn't? She blinked again in confusion.

"Wait..." she mumbled realization at last, as Soundwave finished replacing his face-plate covering. The small clues she should have picked up on and had not caught up to her at last, and she almost laughed at her own bafflement over it all. "Ya can'tsee... wellnot without your..."

She understood then, what it was he'd meant to prove to her in his unexpected action. His own survival, high in rank among a faction known only for its brutally, while damaged himself, and also blinded... It spoke to her of true determination, of refusing to give up and simply die, where many bots may have. And she smiled up at him again, in silent thanks.

Shuffling carefully across the ground a little, to sit much closer to him, she watched in sad dismay as he moved just slightly himself, his frame growing tense, just as though he would quickly move away. But he didn't. Moving even slower, sensing a strange kind of uncertainty from him, Firestorm reached for his left hand with her right. And she sat closer now to the cliff's edge again, holding gently to his fingertips, and smiling for a moment.

"I called ya'good the otha'day," she said slowly. "Iguess that upset ya some'how. I can'tsay I knowwhy yet... but still Imeant it..."

Soundwave nodded once in clear understanding.

"Thank you, Firestorm," he said simply, long after she had stopped thinking he may say anything at all.

The wind gusted yet again, howling for just a moment over the top of the cliff, blowing up more dust than before all around their seated bodies. And for some reason, one that made no sense at all to her, that gust of wind and the billowing of fine metal dust, was just enough to make her sad again. She remembered suddenly that her brother, who had cared for her, and had practically raised her from a youngling, was really gone forever. There had been just a few tears moments before yes. That that was hardly enough to overcome her feelings. And before she could help it, she cried again. This time it was a steady stream of coolant, that flowed from both of her blue optics, enough that the view of anything around her quickly blurred. Her body trembled from far more than just her processor damaged and she felt as though her spark might break in seconds.

And with his own uncertainty clear in his slow, hesitant movements, Soundwave pulled her toward him, wrapped his arms tightly over her small, and just sat saying nothing while she went on crying.


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes/ As far as I can tell now, based on how things are going there will be three possible four chapters left to write and post. And most of it now will be short scenes and 'odds and ends.' Basically I'm focused now on both tying up some loose ends and creating futures for these characters so that I can continue on with a second part. (In part two, along with so many other things we will see Cybershock grow up. Obviously I have plans to give her a personality of her own. Right now she's clearly a bit flat, because well, she's just a little baby.)**

 **I got a question in a review – wher** **e is** **Ultra Magnus? And checking back I'm sure I've gotten that one before. Terribly sorry for missing it months back. Okay, let's address this one. :) When I started this one, writing him in was somehow a bad oversight. I simply forgot all about the fact that yes indeed he did survive** _ **Predicons Rising.**_ **Now, I did certainly remembered this several chapters in, but honestly I was just unsure how to work him in from there, so I decided to simply leave him out. I realize now this was probably a terrible idea, and I thought about going back and editing parts of this to work him in from the start. Trouble is, as you can imagine, this would logically change entirely aspects of the entire plot, because as the obvious leader on base, he would have done so many things differently. Now, I** _ **DO**_ **seriously feel like I should work Ultra Magnus back into the second part... with a few obvious 'cheats' to explain his so far absence.**

"Speedbreaker, please don't feel like you need to stay late into the evening to help me," Ratchet said, glancing toward the clock, on a wall, across the room. And when he did, he blinked his optics once in obvious disbelief over the hours that seemed to have escaped entirely.

"I love working with you though," Speedy answered. She glanced back at the clock herself, certainly surprised herself with the fact that the day had passed by and it was early evening already. But instead of stopping her work, she only picked up a particle scanner and waved it over vials of energon, mixed at varied concentrations, just like Ratchet had directed her to do every so often. "I'm learning so much more than I've ever had a chance to learn before."

"Well," Ratchet said with a chuckle, and a rare hint of a smile on his face-plate. He tapped his hand gently on one of the young bot's shoulder panels, "I certainly won't ever say I'm ungrateful for your help." His smile faded then, and he looked back at the mess of vials and tools, scanners and datapads, scattered about on his favoured large worktable, in the corner of the medbay devoted to his research. "It's wonderful to work with someone clearly interested."

"Are you kidding?" Speedbreaker exclaimed grinning. "The Cybermatter project! Reverse engineering the building blocks of our planet and everything on it. Who wouldn't want to work on this? Surely it's every engineers dream."

"You'd be surprised," Ratchet mused, reaching for a datapad left closest to him on the right, and double checking a set of equations on the screen. "I'm sure you know as well as I do, 'Bee doesn't have the passion for hard science. And Knockout's biggest interest in here, aside from anything directly medically related of course, is usually drawing..." He shook his head slightly, and his musing turned to muttering. "That, and downright goofing off. I swear to Primus. I marvel sometimes that he, of any bot, was the first of us with a bondmate and a child..."

Speedbreaker only shook her head, laughing a little at the old bot's mock crankiness. She leaned over, standing tall as she could on the fronts of her feet, and stared a moment at the long complex equation on the pad he held in his hands. Her knee joints protested a little as she did this for more than just a second, and she ignored the slight pulsing ache, too interested in the series of numbers that could well change the world, to be bothered with the mild annoyance of slightly aching knees.

When he moved to place the pad back onto the work table, she reached to grab it from him instead, wanting a much closer look, and as she did, her back began to ache. It was just a little, though slightly more than the discomfort of her knees. And she quickly hid the involuntary frown that tried to spread across her face-plate at the feeling, all to sure that Ratchet would put a stop to her work with him if only he'd noticed it.

"Speedbreaker," Ratchet said not a few seconds later, she looked intently at the pad she was studying, but still in the very top of her field of vision, she could see his alert and cautious 'medic look.' "You aren't too tired, are you?"

"I'm fine," Speedbreaker insisted, so quickly she was sure that alone had given her away.

"It's just annoying aches and pains," she admitted, with a smile. She really did feel tired, and she noticed that herself only after he'd mentioned it. She frowned again and shook her head a little. "I feel... weak and half useless..."

"You are most certainly not useless, Speedy," Ratchet said. He placed his hand back onto her shoulder panel again and smiled his assurance. "You're carrying. That's a perfectly good excuse to be tired you know."

"I'm a very young bot," Speedbreaker shook her head again. "And Arcee could do five times as much as this while she was carrying Cybershock. And much further along than I am" Indeed, Arcee had trained with her blaster, well into her final term. Jumping and flipping in the air, running, transforming... not to mention, running a base of operations, processing a near endless stream of returning refugees, and caring for a badly disabled bondmate.

"A couple of things for you to bare in mind, Speedy," Ratchet answered. He held up a couple fingers of his right hand, and his face-plate looked serious "Firstly, the earliest stages can well be just as tiring as the final one. Your frame is still adapting to carrying that tiny newspark. And yes it may be tiny at this point, but still it requires a great deal of your own energy supply just to grow bigger. Secondly, Arcee should most certainly not have been doing half the things she did, as often as she did them, and she knows it. Do not follow her example. She's obviously a bad influence. And Age has little to do with it," He smiled then, just a little, at his comment that made light of things. But still his point was clear. The old bot turned then, with another look of understanding, and reached out to grab a nearby chair, which he promptly set down closer to the worktable.

"Take a seat," he said, smiling with understanding, as he gestured to the folding chair. "This is light work anyway. You should be fine a while longer as long as you aren't continuously standing."

"Thanks," Speedbreaker answered, with gratitude at being allowed to keep on working, at least for a while.

"If I may ask, what will you do once you've had your youngling?" Ratchet questioned suddenly, after a long silence consumed only by intent work. And Speedbreaker considered a moment.

"I suppose I'll be home for a while with the youngling, of course," she answered. "But I do want to work again just as soon as it makes sense to. I just can't imagine not. So I guess one day I'll be back at my carrier's sweet shop. He's told me already I'll always have a job. He needs me..."

"Or..." Ratchet exclaimed, grinning by then. "Perhaps you would prefer to come and work for me. A kind of internship, in science and engineering. You wouldn't be just an intern forever of course. I'll soon have a hospital to run on top of teaching you, and so much else. A bot a trained in science would most ideally be the one who would eventually run the science department."

"Ratchet, I..." Speedbreaker only sputtered something of an answer while her spark pounded behind her chest panel. She wanted to blurt that a thing like this had been her dream since she was a youngling on a refugee ship. But of course he must have known that already, or at least he'd assumed. Slowly though her spark began to sink, and in defiance of her own feelings, she smiled again.

"I don't think I can," she said, still smiling and only hoping her voice remained even, while she shook her head. "I mean, don't get me wrong. A chance to finally do something like this for real, to be more than just an armature and self taught tinkerer... it would be amazing. But like I said... my carrier... he needs me. The family business..."

"Never let that stop you in life," Ratchet answered firmly. He still smiled. "I've been talking to your carrier a bit already. Remember, I buy sweets from him as much as anybot." he chuckled just a little before his expression turned serious. Today I proposed to him a brilliant idea, that if you can believe was first proposed to me by Soundwave last night."

"Th... thank you." Speedbreaker mumbled smiling far brighter herself. Trying hard not to let that smile turn into something that would look like she was grinning like an idiot. She wondered all the while what this 'brilliant idea' was. But he was not saying. "I'll certainly think about it."

"We are very close to getting this right," Ratchet muttered, his attention right back to his work again. "One more adjustment to the measurements... and I wonder... Hey, Speedy, hand me that container in front of you there."

"This one?" Speedbreaker asked, seeking confirmation as she grabbed with too much excitement for a container filled with bright bluish glowing liquid.

"Oh, and be careful with that one." Ratchet's quick and urgent warning made her pause. And she carefully grabbed the container with both hands now, holding it with far greater care.

"Is it dangerous?" she asked, holding it out to him, from her place still seated in her folding chair. "What is that stuff?"

"Synthetic energon," Ratchet answered. He thought for a moment, as he took the container from her. "Not exactly dangerous, no... though I would never want anyone to consume the stuff. And with you, a carrying bot, I'm playing it safer."

"What's in this one?" Speedbreaker reached for a second container, this one filled with something glowing purple, and behind the place the first one had been. She did not touch it, but even her hand, reaching out, and coming closer to it, made the old medic-bot freeze in alarm, before he quickly turned to face her with a serious look.

"That's dark energon," he explained, once she had quickly taken the hint and pulled her hand back. "It's reactive and volatile. It's turned bots to literally monsters and it seems, at least from what I've briefly seen of it, that it may just be capable of corrupting machinery. I would not want you to even touch the container it's stored in."

Speedbreaker nodded once in understanding, but her frame was unable to resist a slight shudder at the the old bot's words. Slowly she reached for a data pad, left laying on a worktable. And with curiousity she carefully scanned shorthand typed notes.

"This one's not yours." she said gesturing with her optics toward the pad she was holding. The formatting was different somehow from his. The wording was... off.

"The Cybermattter project is not entirely mine," Ratchet explained. Checking his own pad again, he carefully poured just a little of the glowing bluish liquid into a smaller container in front of him. "Those notes you've got there, they were given to me by the now former Decepticon, Shockwave."

"That bot 'Bee went with you to negotiate with once?" Speedbreaker questioned, remedying. "That same night Cybershock was born?"

"The very same."

"Then... this is what you negotiated for. His safety, for his part of the research?"

"Indeed." Ratchet nodded slightly and only mumbled an answer while he worked intently.

"Is all this really that important?" Speedbreaker asked, amazed. Sure, it may well have been naive of her. And she knew it of course. But still she wondered. "It is so incredibly valuable?"

"Speedy," Ratchet said, with a confidant smile on his face-plate. Setting down his work, he turned to face her. And with both hands firm on her shoulder panels, he continued on. "This may be the most important scietific and medical advance Cybertron has seen in twenty centuries."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"It's still both so strange and amazing to see the sun set on another planet," Jack mused Sitting on the smooth metal ground, he looked out over a river of shining oil, reflecting the fading light in rainbow colors not far below him, and shook his head just a little with the near disbelief over it all. "A sun so different from our own, shinning its light on a world so different from home. But still, it shines. It sets, and rises. You get day and night..."

"What do think I used to think about so often all those years on Earth?" Arcee said, laughing just a little in reply. "I'd watch your sun. I'd think about my home. I'd marvel at how it was so very different, yet somehow so close to the same..."

"I'm glad you got this planet back," Jack grinned. He looked from his bot partner, to slow and winding river below, and back again. "It really is a pretty and amazing place now that it's alive again."

"I thank Primus every day that we could save both of our worlds."

Cybershock, held gently in her carrier's arms, started to wiggle and fuss, and squirm and fuss some more. And Arcee shifted her child a little, before she carefully shifted her far more so that the little one could see the river too. Cybershock held a small toy – a few links of light brass chain, between her hands. And suddenly she dropped it with a giggle, to land on the ground in front of Jack's folded knees. Instantly her giggles turned to pouting, as she reached for the toy, now far below her outstretched hands.

"You want this?" Jack asked the baby Cybertronian, standing up at once with the toy dangling from his hand. The baby giggled again and grabbed for it.

"Well, don't drop it again," the human warned, laughing. It was only a second before she indeed dropped it again, and so obviously on purpose.

"Now you've done it, Jack," Arcee said with a laugh of her own, bending forward a bit so that her youngling in her arms was closer to eye and optic level with her human partner. And Jack looked at her, with entirely no idea what she meant by that, until the baby dropped the toy yet again, and she squealed with laughter as she did so. "She thinks she's found herself a perfectly amusing and hilarious game."

"You're just being silly," Jack said to the baby. And his eyes looked her in the bright blue optics as he handed over the toy he'd just picked up again. Cybershock giggled loudly, and the force of her laughter caused her to soon emit a loud and not unlikable whirring kind of buzzing noise.

"What if I took this?" Jack asked her playfully. Slowly he moved to hide the toy behind his back. "What if I told you it's mine now?"

Cybershock looked at him a moment, clearly puzzled. And her laughter stopped abruptly. Her grin turned to a sad little pout, and she made a distressed little whir, while she reached for a toy she could no longer see any sign of. When Jack quickly presented the toy again, she laughed loudly, and made a rough and still clumsy motion of trying to clap her little metal hands together.

Jack watched as Arcee bent carefully down, to place the baby, laying face down on the smooth metal ground, before she sat down close to her. He watched, chuckling a little, as the little one explored the texture of the blue tinted metal of the ground, with curious and reaching fingers. He watched her, impressed, as she rolled herself over, to lay on her back, giggling again. And finally, with another roll partway back over again, and little help from her own arms to stabilize herself, the baby sat herself up, and just stayed there looking around her.

"Hey, that's pretty good," Jack exclaimed his surprise at learning the baby could indeed sit up like that on her own.

"That's the first time she's done that," Arcee explained, laughing under her intakes just a little, and impressed herself. "Soon enough she'll probably crawl. Then I'm really in trouble..." Her gaze wandered briefly from her child and her partner, to somewhere out over the river, before she looked back again, and went on speaking, her tone now clearly a bit sad. "Knockout wanted so much to be able to sit up unaided before our child learned to do it. Still, he'll be happy as anything to see her beat him to it. She's always been his biggest motivation to keep on trying... well anything really. I don't think he'd do half the crazy things he's insisted on doing if we didn't have her." She paused a moment smiling from her youngling to her human partner and back again. Eventually she shook her head a little and mused, "a couple days ago now, in the morning, he got the idea in his processor that maybe, just maybe he could get himself from our recharge station, onto his mobility cart with no help at all. Never mind that he'd only practised that in rehabilitation twice and never without help."

"W..what happened?" for a moment Jack was almost horrified, imagining that it could only have gone badly.

"He got it right. That night he did it again in reverse. He's never fallen yet... of course Ratchet learned of this quickly, and at first I thought he'd get his wrench to crack him over the head with it." Arcee sat a moment, just shaking her head, with a bemused look on her face-plate. "Of course we all know he'd never do it. Knockout's successes make that old bot proud as anything."

"Knockout is so far from being helpless, as far as I've seen while I've been here. And it's obvious even to me he's so much happier even as a damaged Autobot than he was as a fully functional 'con..."

Arcee just nodded her head in agreement. She looked out across the river, and she gestured with her optics toward the place she was looking.

"See that flat plane over there?" she asked. And when Jack nodded slowly, looking toward the place indicated, she continued with another tiny laugh. "That's the place Knockout and I met for the first time. Of course it was little more than an energon soaked battle field then."

"You didn't meet on Earth?"

"Most members of both factions all knew each other on Cybertron first, remember. We all travelled separately to Earth, only to cross paths once again. Of course we all just picked right up where we'd left off..." Arcee looked sad for a moment. And she shook her head slightly, before she spoke again. "Knockout was honestly decent with his skills in battle, when he wasn't ready to run for it. He had a good hold on that staff of his, and I was carefully dodging his bolts of electrical current, for what seemed like too long, while I tried to convince him that the medics were never supposed to fight. He said my dead frame would be perfect for dissection. I quickly gave up on reasoning and decked him... He pulled a rotary blade on me. I pulled a pair of blasters..." She looked then at Cybershock, still sitting on the ground grinning as she shoved her little toy made of mental chain links into her mouth to chew on it. And again she shook her head. "We'll have our own apartment together before we know it. Bulkhead is over at the last finished building now. Sounds like he's assessing a place on the tenth floor, for accessibility adaptations..."

"Everything is turning out so different than I ever would have guessed in a million years," Jack mused, quiet and retrospective. "Knockout defecting... that was one thing. But then so did Soundwave, of any bot. It's a bit funny really in some crazy sort of way... Miko is Knockout's human friend. Now Raf is fast becoming Soundwave's. Those two, both befriending the bot that once traded them as hostages." He stopped talking seconds after Cybershock, sitting close to where he stood, half dropped and half throw her toy to the ground, so clearly trying to re-instigate the little game of theirs. And quickly he bent to pick it up and hand it too her. The baby bot's head, while she sat and the ground and he stood, reached over halfway to the top of his chest. And Jack laughed a little, for the first time, from their current perspective, truly realizing just how big Arcee's child really was. He sat on the ground close to her, well aware of making himself appear to be even smaller. And slowly, with a nearly disbelieving shake of his head, he spoke again, finishing the thought he'd started. "I could never have achieved what they did."

"Knockout and Soundwave were on some level both looking for friendship," Arcee answered, in a tone that could not have been mistaken for anything less than understanding. "Or at least they were not completely opposed to it." She laughed a little then and slightly shook her head back at him. "No one ever could have expected you to even try to befriend Starscream, Jack. That thought honestly horrifies me just a bit..."

"Are you guys still technically Auotbots?" Jack knew his question must have sounded just as odd and out of nowhere to her, as he feared it did. But it had suddenly occurred to him to ask, and so he had. "The 'cons are fully no more now. The last of them are either defectors are dead now. So where's that leave you? After centuries of war, with fighting and battle and endless combat shaping your entire world and its culture, can there be Autobots without Decepticons?"

"It always used to be Raf that asked the complicated questions," Arcee answered with a sigh. "Going away to school, being on your own so far from home, it's made you think differently. It's made you question more, made you wonder more."

"You don't think that's a bad thing, do you?" For a moment, Jack was worried – ever the same young human that cared so much what a huge, sentient robotic being thought of him and his behaviour.

"Of course not," Arcee laughed a little. "It's worked well for Raf so far."

"So, how would you answer then? Are you still Autobots?"

"We'll always be Autobots, Jack. It's not just our faction - a side to fight on in the war. It's become an identity. Autobot as much who I am now, as what I am."

"Cool," Jack mumbled with a smile at his bot friend. It may have been a Miko-like answer perhaps. And he almost laughed at simply realizing that. But that simple reply was the only one he felt the need to make.

"You packed up and ready to go tonight?" Arcee questioned, after several long moments of sitting in happy silence just watching the youngling and the river.

"All packed," Jack confirmed with a nod. It was almost hard to believe it, but he and the others of the humans were finally going home that evening.

The distinct and familiar sound of a ground bridge whirring lightly as it opened somewhere behind them made both Jack and his bot partner turn to look in its direction. Knockout drove quickly away from the portal on that strange, efficient machine of his. He may have been limited, but still he was just as good as any bot at serving as safe effective transport for a human – any of which were so greatly disadvantaged, slow and vulnerable on the world of huge bots. And at the moment, Miko sat, perched carefully on his right shoulder panel while he drove.

The ground bridge remained open even after he had more than cleared it. And a good few moments later, Jack saw why. Another bot, another of the slowly growing number of Cybertronian females appearing on their world, and this one white and yellow, left the bridge behind the others. She was slow, and uncoordinated, with steadily trembling hands, and using the handlebars of some strange upright sort of wheeled frame to hold her self up. But still he moved clearly just as fast as she could, even if that was still indeed slower than one should have moved, pushing the frame in front of her, her stumbling feet struggling to keep on going. Jack remembered that he had met her- or at least seen her in passing – very briefly just a couple of days before, in the midst of the chaos of some medical disaster he'd finally learned involved exploded energon inside a mine somewhere. He hadn't noticed the mobility equipment then. And suddenly he found himself taken just slightly aback by the discovery of a second badly dysfunctional bot.

"Wait uuup..." she said, with strangely mumbled speech. She hurried on, trying in vain to keep up, as Knockout steadily put more distance between them. "I... nofast like yoo ah."

"Ha. I'm pretty sure you're the only one to ever call _me_ fast," Knockout answered, laughing a little in reply. But still, And much to Jack's dismay, he did not stop for even a second to let her catch up. "Last one to the river bank is...," he paused in his speaking a moment, and still drove on forward. "Miko, remind me again what you humans call someone who's last?"

"A rotten egg!" Miko cried, laughing loudly. And with no warning at all, she slid somewhat recklessly right down from Knockout's shoulder, and over his bent knees, before she leapt without so much as a pause, right down to the ground close to his font wheel. Instantly she was running, while she yelled over the noise of moving bots, "I'm gonna beat both of you there!"

"Miko, be careful," Arcee said, optics watching the young human run half carelessly, and still close to the wheel. She sounded so much like anybody's mother now, and Jack reminded himself quickly that it was simply because she actually was one.

"He'd stop and wait for her if he really needed to," Arcee explained. And Jack knew she must have read the bothered expression on his face. She gestured slightly toward the white and yellow bot. "Firestorm is pretty well unstoppable. I suppose that's because her processor was damaged while she was still a youngling. She just does what she does, because she's always just done it that way."

"Meee-ko going ta bea-us..." the young bot said, seconds later. And Jack to, to his great surprise, saw that she was laughing now as she spoke, and all the while still trying to catch up.

"So, let's not let her," Knockout answered fast, as the human began to put more and more distance between them.

And the younger bot, with agreement practically written across her pale yellow face-plate, made exactly four much longer than her usual steps, before the slight unevenness of the ground caused her right foot to stumble first, followed closely by her left. With the handlebars of her frame she caught herself well before she fully fell down onto her knees. She stood upright again from there, and grinning, she walked on.

Knockout had stopped then, turning that machine of his partway back around. But he turned again fast and drove on, when her look so clearly said she thought she might just catch up. Knockout reached the river bank, not too far behind Miko. And as the young bot, Firestorm, kept on moving to complete the task of reaching it herself. And sure enough she did so and only stumbled once more and without falling. Knockout began quickly fumbling then with well fitted and fastened shoulder harness straps, that Jack had not noticed until then that he had even been strapped into his machine with. Or – more likely it seemed – he had strapped himself in, since he could obviously do the reserve just fine.

"You can transform, Firestorm," Arcee said to the young bot, who was now walking slowly toward the little group gathered sitting on the ground, still pushing the frame in front of her. "You could have had them both easily in your alt mode."

"That'be cheatin'" Firestorm answered, laughing as she stood near the group, smiling at the baby.

Knockout, Jack realized, amazed and almost disbelieving, had been deliberately inspiring the younger bot to move faster, to walk steadier on purpose. He must have drawn on his own medical training, and used his clear passion for the field, to understand just how to help her by teaching her body to become stronger and he helped her more so, by letting her simply have fun in doing it. He watched as Arcee stood to promptly plop Cybershock down onto Knockout's lap. He laughed a little at seeing the baby grin brightly as soon as he grinned at her, and bounced her just as well as he could on his right knee. The baby, Jack saw in just that simple moment, probably loved him more than anybot on Cybertron. Arcee had been right about that.

Firestorm, the young bot whose name Jack had only just learned, sat herself down on the metal ground, near the place where Jack still sat. He smiled a greeting at her, as he introduced himself, with a hand extended to shake a fingertip as the humans had taken to doing in place of handshakes with bots. And clearly the bot must have done the same before, probably with Miko, because she held out a right hand fingertip right away, obviously familiar already with the practice. But the smile on her face-plate, so bright while she was engaged in competition, racing Knockout and Miko to the river, faded all too quickly now that she was simply seated quiet on the ground. Jack frowned a little at that, remembering the recent disaster, the base had received the horrific results of. At once he understood without needing anyone to tell him, that she had lost someone important to her in that disaster.

"The bags and blankets are ready by the ground bridge control," Miko said. She flopped down onto the ground close by, and for a moment she just lay with her head in her hands propped on her elbows and kicked her legs back and forth up behind her. "Tonight we're really all going home."

Jack had had no idea at all, what it was he was supposed to say to a young Cybertronian in the face of an obvious loss of some other bot he himself had never known. And Miko's comment served as perfect distraction from a need to figure that out in that moment.

"Yeah," he answered quickly. And he added with confidence, "I'm gonna miss this place and the bots of course. But Earth is home. And I'm excited to get back to school."

His step father thankfully had a few strings he could pull with the military college of Rhode Island, and he'd pulled them all, to get Jack a perfectly excusable leave from his classes for out of state experimental treatment for a not at all real medical condition.

"Yeah, I guess I'm kinda ready to get home too," Miko said, considering. "Getting ready for finals soon."

"Think you'll catch up in time?" Jack asked, partly because he really did wonder, and mostly because he had that same worry for himself.

"Sure," Miko's answer was surprisingly confidant. And she just stayed where she was, kicking her legs behind her a moment before she explained. "Knockout's been helping me with all that homework my teachers emailed to me. Now granted, he's no help at all with history, his thing is clearly math and science, but I think I'll manage. And my language elective is English, and my English is good enough to pass for an American, so..."

Jack knew that at still not quite seventeen, Miko was practically on her own already, while her father worked in foreign countries for seasons on end, and her mother had an affair while she worked day and night. Of course she had been given a wonderful cover story too. Hers simply involving a second, shorter term trip back to the US to study. But this satisfied mostly her school. Either one of her parents, sad as it may have been, may barely have noticed she was even away at all.

"Miko, aren't you going to share your good news?" Knockout questioned, from his place off to the side of the little gathered group, on his mobility machine with his baby on his lap.

"What news?" For a moment Miko appeared genuinely confused. Then she sat up on the ground, shrugged, and muttered, "oh, the grade thing? Knockout, no one but you cares about that."

"I don't know about that," Knockout answered, with a laugh under his intake. The baby, sitting on his lap, had been chewing away happily on the end of her metal chain toy. And suddenly she gave up on that, and with a laugh she tossed the toy to the ground once again.

"Cybershock, please don't drop your toys," Knockout said, with a smile and shake of his head. He spoke to her in a way that sounded strangely adult, just as though she could understand what he was saying. He reached, pointedly toward the ground with his stronger hand, clearly trying all the while to keep her balanced at the same time, and barely reaching halfway before a clear risk of overbalancing. He laughed just slightly then and shook his head again. "I cannot possibly pick that up."

"My grades in every subject are on a steady increase," Miko explained. She got up from the ground quickly, and run over to retrieve the toy herself. Holding it carefully with one hand, she used the other hand and both feet, to climb awkwardly onto the mobility machine's front wheel , then to the armrest, where she offered the chain back to the baby. "My school administrator says if I keep it up next year, I'll actually make it to post secondary after all." The baby, sitting on her creator's lap. Took her toy back gently. And she looked up at Knockout, with big blue optics, that strangely showed her understanding, of what he had just explained.

"I think that's great news," Jack said and behind him Arcee nodded.

"Firestorm, How are you today?" Arcee asked, turning around, and of course inviting the young bot, Jack had just met, back into the conversation.

"I... I'am mostly betta'ta'day," Firestorm said. Her voice was certainly not fully normal for a bot. It was slow and mumbled. But still it was not so difficult to understand her after a moment to get used to the speech pattern. "Still no'sure where I'go wit'my brother gone. But I'll de'cide soon I'guess." The young bot looked at the ground, clearly sad again for a moment, until ruffianly she looked up again and said in her usual mumbled voice, "I'll be'workin' vari'soon!"

Hearing this, Jack turned fact to look fully at her. And his eyes darted from the young bot to the others, as he tried to shift though a strange mix of feelings that ran through his head. So, it had been her brother who had died. And the comment about a place to go told him, it had been the brother who had cared for her. Norw with him gone, she was straight out into the workforce. He asked himself if that news was good news. Yes everyone on Cybertron, it seemed did their part and earned their keep. Even Knockout clearly had a job, though Jack had admitted at first been surprised to learned that he could and did. And really that was little different than Earth. There was certainly nothing wrong with that as a rule. Still, the very idea of this young bot, disabled, damaged and newly alone on her world, working for her place and struggling just to keep up...

The young bot, Firestorm was smiling though. Nearly grinning her happiness, that showed throuhg grief, as soon as she had said she'd have a job. This was what she wanted, Jack understood, smiling right back. To work for her own keep, to have credits that she had earned by herself, to do something bigger and have her own place in the world... this was what she wanted more than anything. And course the Autobots would let her try.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"Thanks for the game," Raf said, grinning.

He may have only introduced Soundwave and Laserbeak to a PC version of _Risk_ the day before, after they had too quickly almost mastered chess. But already he had managed to lose every game he had played with this one too after the first game they'd ever played. Raf only shrugged, sincerely laughing it off. Both of his fellow human members of team Prime may have been competitive – Miko especially so – but to him games were far more about sharpening mental skill, and simply passing a little time with friends. And of course Jack and Miko, would have always far preferred loud racing or street fighting games to anything that required any real foresight and strategy: not that he considered such things bad or even entirely uninteresting.

But Soundwave was interested in the things that he was truly interested in too – he could do things with computers and coding that most would not even think to dream of. He loved to think, to reason, to plan, and stratigize. And he was always busy learning – something. Laserbeak, it had so quickly turned out, was the very same way. She may have been a bird of course. But even she could beat Raf at games of great strategy. And he could respect that. Neither one of them ever talked, or even seemed to make a sound. But they listened with obvious interest. And each had their own ways, however unexpected, of making that interest apparent.

Raf had been sitting on a huge bot worktable, looking up comfortably at the monitor of a huge computer in a little used room on the base's lower level, while they played. And now he stood up slowly, and moved to the edge of that huge table. When Soundwave extended a hand, however hesitant the bot may have clearly been about it, Raf confidently climbed right onto it.

"I'm leaving Cybertron tonight," Raf said. He wondered as he did so, if the bot and his bird knew that already or not. He knew not to doubt it. Nothing, it seemed, was ever unknown to Soundwave. The bot, sure enough, nodded his head once, in a clear show if his knowning. And Raf, sighing, plopped himself legs dangling over the side of the bot's hand.

"No reason to stay much longer," he went on, thinking out loud, wondering all the while to himself if thought that finally going back home was good news or bad. "There's certainly no danger in being back on Earth now. No more insane bots ready to grab any of us without notice. We prob'ly could have left before now, but I guess none of us really wanted to... Agent Fowler told my parents Ive been working for him in Washington. Some crazy cover story about a top secret project involving hacking North Korea's defence files. All they had to say apparently is fine by them, and fair enough. Just don't get into any trouble. I called home myself last week... rigged up the base's comm so my cellphone number would display on the other end. I could hear my brother, fighting with his girlfriend somewhere in the background, yet again. Some kid was banging on pots and pans near by too. Their daughter or my younger brother. Who knows? All my dad had to say is my mom lost her job and she's drinking again. No 'take care' no ' miss you, hurry home.'"

"For my own part in your past capture – my true apology."

Soundwave had never spoken to him before. And Raf looked around him a second, momentarily confused over who it was that had in fact spoken now. He knew of course the bot _could_ talk. But he also knew that he simply didn't, or least he never had to him. The human thought then for a moment, wondering what exactly the bot was talking about. And finally he understood; the glass container, a still unimpaired Cybertron – held in trade for keys. Knockout, he knew, had once apologized to Miko for his own part in all that too.

"Thanks" Raf said simply, grinning at the bot he was still looking up at. He'd assumed already that Soundwave regretted that move. But he'd understood his motivations and knew that things had been different then, in a time not so long before. In the young human's mind,'sorry' just seemed to without saying, when they'd first forged their strange kind of friendship. Still, to hear it made him smile. To hear the bot speak any words at all, made him smile even more. He wondered sillantly to himself, had Soundwave spoken then, And had he chose to say he was sorry, because that would be the last chance he'd have to say so.

"I'll... I'll comm you sometime," Raf said. Laserbeak sat perched on Soundwave's shoulder, and the human looked at her then too. "Well, I'll comm both of you. You can type on a keyboard if you don't wanna say much. Hit me up someday if you ever feel like a chess game online."


	46. Chapter 46

_Several Earth Months Later_

"Good morning, Overdrive," Knockout said. He rolled slowly into the room, only after a moment's pause in which he'd used his right hand to tap on the halfway open door.

And inside the room, the patient he'd come to see - an old bot with a pair of well bandaged wrists – looked up from her recharge station, and smiled a greeting to him.

"I've been working exactly like you told me to do," Overdrive said proudly, and still smiling. Lifting her left arm a little, she carefully bent and unbent the fingers of the left hand several times, before slowly turning her arm back and forth slightly.

"Your range of motion is clearly improving," Knockout nodded approvingly. "Nice work. Let's see the other one quick."

"The right was always the worse of the two, remember," he reminded her with confidence and a smile of assurance, when she tried to move that arm and hand just as much as the first and could not quite manage to fully do so. "It'll be more work to catch up now with that one, but you'll get there."

"Practice makes perfect I do suppose," the elderly bot said, nodding back, and letting him know she believed him entirely. And she glanced a moment toward the window across the room from her recharge station, through which the morning sun was already streaming in. And smiling as ever she asked slowly. "Do you suppose you could do me a small favour?"

"For you... I think I could certainly make it happen," Knockout joked easily.

"Could you open the window for me, dear? It looks like it's going to be such a lovely day..." Overdrive stopped then suddenly, and for a second she just looked from Knockout to his cart and up to the window, almost above his reach. "I wasn't thinking. Are you able to do that?"

"I can." Knockout only smiled at her concern, clearly meant only out of polite understanding. And reaching down to the space beside him on the cart, a gap between his frame and the armrest, he fetched a reaching tool that had fast become a most useful item. With his stronger hand he worked the handle of the thing, so that it's other end could bend to catch the window's edge as he grabbed for it. And then he simply reversed the cart, pulling the window open as he did so.

"Perhaps today you can get up for a while," he said, turning back the old bot on the recharge station. "Maybe even take a short walk outside, if you're up to it. Enjoy some of that lovely sunshine in the courtyard."

"Oh I think I'd most certainly like that."

"I'd imagine so. But I'll leave you to rest a while for now. Someone will be around soon enough with some fuel for you."

"Knockout," the elderly bot called after him, as soon as he had turned to roll back out of her room again on his cart. "May I speak with you a moment? If you have a moment of course."

Knockout turned around again, and rolled himself back toward the recharge station, carefully placing his reaching tool back into it's place out of his way. "Oh I think I have a moment or two."

"I feel I must admit I was floored entirely when I found out you were the doctor that would be taking over my case while I was in here. Why, the first time I saw you anywhere around here, on that machine of yours, I naturally just assumed you were another patient... and one in a terrible state I might add. I could only think at first, 'poor young bot. I do hope he survives.' And those optics of yours... well it seemed such a great misfortune, because of course of what red ones have come to mean to Cybertron. And when you first came in to say hello, rolling on over, with that datapad of notes in your hand, and I watched you promptly taking more, I wondered, and quite ignorantly I'm afraid, just how it was you could possibly be doing this work. And then I was just plain afraid, because of things I just did not understand." Overdrive stopped speaking for a brief moment, in which she reached out with her left hand, the one she was so far able to work with , and gently she lifted Knockout's almost completely dysfunctional hand from the hand control of his cart, so that she could gently hold onto it a second and firmly make her point. "I learned quite quickly that that was all ridiculous. You're such a sweet young bot. And smart and capable as anyone. It's instantly clear how you love your work. Ratchet told me yesterday you might just be chief administrator one day. I told him we could all only hope so. And..." she paused again to smile for a second, with a reminiscing look about her. "You remind me so much of my great grand-creation..."

"That all means a lot to me," Knockout answered in thanks. And he meant it entirely.

Work had been tireless in the past months when it came to the job of converting the base into Cybertron's first new hospital. Indeed the entire section that the medbay happened to inhabit, the entire long hallway leading to it from the main doors, was now devoted entirely to patient care and the art of medicine. Rooms once used to house Autobot soldiers, were simple but certainly comfortable patient rooms. And each ship that landed – and there were still many arrival regularly – seemed to bring with them bots sick and injured, some for a long time, and in need of immediate care. Indeed, that combined with the needs of a growing city already well populated, and there was never any shortage of bots needing treatment. The very elderly bot he was presently talking with, had come in recently on board a returning ship, in need of urgent surgery to partly reconstruct lower arms severely damaged due to lack of any needed maintenance in her old age.

Knockout had stepped up at once, doing just as much as he could, and taking on any job or case that did not require two good and steady hands. And the busier the hospital seemed to become, the more he learned that he could actually do, to be completely useful in his field. But Knockout had initially been trained primarily with battle field medicine in mind, and for service on board a warship. Patient consultations, morning rounds, common viruses and broken fingers were things he could master if he tried. But he was still indeed in the midst of mastering it all. And the opinions of the civilian bots themselves, those were still so mixed. Some feared for the colour of his optics. Some barely seemed to notice they were red at all, and discriminated instead because of the mobility cart and poor function of his limbs. Still others seemed to care less, and those were growing more and more common already. But still, no matter how much she shrugged off the regular insults and outwardly laughed about it, inwardly he still cringed, and worse, doubted himself, every time he heard it.

"Thank you for making my day much better," Knockout added after a second of simply reflecting. He smiled a quick smile at the elderly bot, who was quickly becoming a favourite patient of his.

"Ratchet said in passing yesterday that you have a lovely little daughter," Overdrive said. She let her light hold on him go.

"I certainly do," Knockout answered at once, laughing and instantly proud as ever at a chance to brag about his youngling. In a second he'd reached down to rummage carefully through the side basket attached to his cart, and found his datapad that he carried with him for personal note taking. On the front page, when powered up, was a picture of his daughter, and of course he held it out then to show it off. "That's Cybershock. I may have made far more than my share of bad mistakes in life, but she will always be my greatest accomplishment."

"She looks a fair bit like you," Overdrive smiled again. And her face-plate turned serious as she added thoughtfully, "there will always be so many bots who will think of what you can't do, instead of many things you clearly can. But you'll always be a hero to that little girl of yours. She'll always think you're perfect as you are just because she loves you, and it's what she always knew. Really, at the end of the day, you surely agree that's what most matters."

"I think you're very right." Knockout sat a moment on his cart, just reflecting, grateful to have that simple reminder of what really did matter more than anything.

"I suppose I had best let you get back to your rounds," Overdrive said, dragging him quickly back from his thoughts. And he nodded with another little smile on his face-plate

"Well you have a wonderful morning, Overdrive. And enjoy that sunshine outside later, hey."

Rolling back out of overdrive's room, Knockout travelled perhaps a few metres before he nearly bumped his cart right into a patient, who sat strangely enough in the hallway not far from doors that led to the medbay. The bot, Turbocharge, was currently the only youngling patient in the hospital, and he was still a pretty young one too. Not even close to half grown yet. He'd been found on the very same recently arrived ship, seemingly filled with misfortune and damaged bots. The young one, it appeared had had troubles with both of his legs, since half a century before. And with no one to diagnose and certainly no one to fix a then still possibly fixable problem, it had only gotten worse and worse. The little one had arrived back on Cybertron, unable to walk or even to move either leg at all. But still he smiled often and pushed himself around the medical centre sitting on a mechanic's sliding board, his carrier had found for him one day outside. And he used both of his arms, hands reaching over the sides, to move himself on it. The kid did have a wheelchair to move himself around in, obviously. Ratchet had quickly located one that was 'youngling-sized' when he'd arrived. But the kid it seemed actually liked the board far more. He'd stated before that it was 'fun.'

None of this though, explained why the little bot was actually in the middle of the hallway on his little wheeled board, stopped right in the way. And Knockout only shook his head, amused where perhaps he should not have been, And relieved he hadn't run into him.

"Sorry, Doctor Knockout," Turbocharge exclaimed. And the look on his little red face-plate showed that he meant it.

"That's okay, Turbo," Knockout answered, understanding. "You just be careful. I can't exactly trip and fall, but anyone else easily can."

"I'll be careful," the young agreed nodding. He pushed himself back and forth a little on the mechanic's board, and looked up with a contemplating expression. "Are you going to fix my legs?"

"I can't do that kind of work," Knockout explained. He talked to the youngling just like he would any grown bot, just the way he spoke even to his own youngling who was of course so much younger than this one. And Turbocharge looked up at him, with obvious willingness to listen just like an adult would have done. "Well, at least I can't anymore. Ratchet will give it his best try. If anyone can get you back up running, he can. And then you get me for follow up consultations later on."

"Okay," the little bot replied simply, with a smile and shrug of his shoulders. Then his expression turned contemplating again, and more so this time.

"Doctor, Knockout?" He asked slowly, and Knockout could practically see the gears in the little one's head turning. "If Doctor Ratchet can fix me... and he's already fixed so many others, will he ever fix you too?"

Knockout paused a moment before he even tried to give the youngling any real answer. How, he wondered, could he explained to him that a processor was far more complex than a pair of legs could ever be. The little's bot's trouble was mostly a matter of bad and faulty wiring and limbs that needed straightening. A processor; that was so much more than that. No bot fully even understood exactly how one worked yet, let alone how to even try to fix one when it failed the body. But how, he wondered, could he even try to explain the difference.

"He's certainly still trying to," he said simply after a moment, settling on the most simple of answers. And it was certainly not untrue.

"Hey Turbo," he said, after the youngling had nodded his pleased understanding of the answer but said nothing more about it. "Come here a second and look in my side basket." He gestured with his right hand down toward the little basket mounted to the side of his cart.

Turbocharge pushed himself closer to the side of the mobility and he reached out slowly. But his small hand was clearly hesitant to reach in and mess with whatever it was that was stored inside the basket. Knockout only nodded at him grinning, assuring him that indeed he wanted him to do exactly that.

"Reach right to the bottom," he said, still smiling. "I think there might just be something in there for you."

"Something for me?" The youngling, bracing his right hand on the floor to hold the rolling board in place while he sat on it, with his badly bent and damaged legs in front of him, smiled with anticipation as he played along with Knockout's little game and reached down into the basket.

"Sweets!" he cried happily, finally pulling out a small handful of them. And he looked a second at his prize. "Cobalt flavoured ones!"

"Your carrier said you like those best," Knockout laughed. And promptly he raised his right hand to put a finger against his lips to make a 'shh' kind of motion. "Just don't tell Doctor Ratchet I gave you so many."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Soundwave flew at low altitude over endless flat plains of sulphur. And when the sulphur plain turned abruptly to shimmering amythist and quartz that stretched on for miles, he dropped his altitude more more still, flying fast over the shinning crystal field at perhaps only hundreds of metres in the air. Firestorm - carried carefully with him as he flew, holding onto her tightly below his jet mode, with his electrified cables he had always used for more more sinister reasons – was added weight obviously. And he was not exactly used to flying with such additional weight at all. But she was not exactly heavy. He could carry her just fine.

"Where'we goin'?" Firestorm questioned, speaking for the first time since he had picked her up and jumped with her from a clifftop.

He'd worried, admittedly, that at first she may just have screamed at his unannounced decision. But she hadn't. And now she was laughing as she asked her simple question.

"There is... a place I want to show you," Soundwave answered simply.

He turned fast, banking hard to the left, and angling steadily upward, quickly gaining the altitude he needed, as he approached the city they had been close to in the first place. But this time he zoomed right over it, not stopping and hardly slowly, quickly rising even higher to far more then clear the tops of high rise housing buildings, that occupied the North-East side. The place was going up fast, he knew. But looking down now to see the look of shock and wonder on Firestorm's face-plate, he understood how strange the simple realiztion of this fact was for her, seeing it from the air for the first time in her life. The city was barely even a true city yet, not by far. It should not have _needed_ many floor highrises. But this was the way the Autobot's were planning and the planning did make sense Build upward early. This lesson Bulkhead had given him once when they had got to talking construction. Create a place where that made sense from the start, and keep the city as compact as it could be when one day it housed five million bots.

"Fly higha' Soundwave," Firestorm exclaimed, below him. Her tone of voice was still laughing, excited to see just how high he could go.

And so he did.

Leaving the city again, he flew upward and upward, reaching the highest he could possibly have felt safe carrying her at in minutes. And at a couple thousand metres above their world, they could see in so many directions at once. The sulpher fields to the North and the crystal plain beyond that _._ The fast expanding city to the South. And the cliffs and valleys that stretched far to the South of that. Out to the East, the cliffs stretched further and then dropped off again to level plain, and through a ridge of jagged foothills wound the Boiling River. And it was to the East that Soundwave quickly turned to fly.

Firestorm had been holding lightly to the cables that held her. But suddenly both of her small hands let them go. Slowly she moved both of her arms out to the sides, reaching out just as far as she could clearly reach. Just as though she were flying on her own. They moved fast then toward the river of thin boiling water oil, so hot that the steam pouring from it rose high into the air. But from so high up, its heat did not so much as touch their body armour. And Soundwave circled the long way around, passing high over the cliffs and the river below again, just because Firestorm was clearly having too much fun to make him want to land.

Eventually though he slowly began to drop his altitude again. And carefully he descended toward a low steep sided valley tucked away between the cliffs, far behind the Boiling River. He dropped still more and when he was only metres above the valley he transformed in the air, holding his companion in his still extended cables, to drop them both safely to the ground.

"I un'a-stan' why ya' need'ed ta fly here," Firestorm remarked, amazed and looking around the small valley, as she carefully stood herself up on the ground, from the seated position she had landed in. Indeed, the entire small valley was enclosed on all sides by high and steep, sheer sheets of metal and more shimmering crystal. And beyond it on all sides, any hope of a road or path of any kind through utterly unforgiving and deadly terrain, would surely have been impossible.

"Location – so inaccessible, the great war never reached it," Soundwave said.

"Its'amazin'" Firestorm mumbled back, smiling bright as usual and probably more so. She stood a while looking up at Soundwave, before her optics went back to looking around the small valley again. "Wha'is this'place?"

Firestorm's little walking frame had been picked up by Soundwave before he had flown off. And he'd brought it with them, stored inside his alt mode. Now it sat, safe and sound inside his storage compartment. And she laughed a little as he quickly reached in to retrieve it again. But instead of using it to walk anywhere – there was little need to walk anywhere fast- she just stayed standing still on her own.

"I found this place when I was still a youngling bot," Soundwave explained, speaking slowly, searching again for words, as he so often did when he spoke entire long sentences. Laserbeak left her place mounted to his chest panel, and he watched a second as she flew happily toward the sky above, ready for some freedom in flight of her own. "Still long before the start of the war."

Firestorm moved slowly, to sit herself carefully back down on the ground, dropping first onto her knees, and then shifting her position so that she was seated. And Soundwave, with some hesitation, moved to sit with her.

"My creation was a mistake," he began to explain, sure that his words would barely seem relevant to start, but trusting Firestorm to assume it would come together. " My carrier... She never hid that fact. Never denied it. But..." he paused for a moment that to himself felt far too long, while he struggled harder than he wanted to, just to put together spoken language, and make it make sense. "She used to tell me so much while I still very small, that I was the best mistake that had ever been made. And she would smile, just as brightly as you, while she threw me into the air laughing. My creator though, he liked to beat her badly, throw her to the floor and kick her until she bled, call her nothing and worthless... She had been sold to him once to be his mate and his slave. And he made it no secret that one day he would sell me back into slavery. When he drank high grade, he would beat her worse than ever, and she would yell at me to run, to run away and wait for her to come and find me when he finally collapsed into recharge on the living room floor. When finally I was big enough to have alt mode, and I learned how to fly, I would fly away instead of running. And I could fly further than id ever been. One day I found this place. This became my hideaway from Cybertron, from the creator that called me broken, a mistake because I could barely speak a sentence then."

Firestorm wanted to believe then that perhaps he had escaped from that life. That his carrier may have found him own day hiding in that little valley, with a bag packed for him and one for herself, to tell him she was taking him away that brute she'd been left with. She wanted to imagine they had run together for their lives, worked hard as they could, and somehow they'd made it. But even the hints of details she knew already of his life at some point later than that, let her know for sure that was simply not likely the case at all. And sadly she shook her head, looked up at him, and wondered if he might just say more.

"My creator beat me one day, for dropping a high grade container he'd ordered me to bring him," Soundwave went on, after several long moments. "And he called me a slagging coward when I would not dare to fight back. But I didn't know how. He hit me again and again. It was certainly not the first time, but it was certainly the worst by far. Eventually I was knocked unconscious from constant hard blows, and the last I remember was the sound of my carrier screaming at him, begging him to stop. When I woke again, it was evening and my carrier was dead. He explained to me with, some sick kind of calm, that she'd come after him with a pot filled with boiling water, she'd been heating to sanitize energon containers. So he shot her dead for it.

"The next morning I was sold, just as he'd long promised I would be. Bought like I was only property, by a cruel master who beat me up as badly as my creator had. Within only days I had run away, certain I didn't want to live life enslaved like my carrier had been. My spark knew somewhere that the only bot that had ever truly loved and valued me would have wanted me to run away, just like she'd always taught me to. I nearly starved in the streets and finally I was caught by somebot recharging on a roadside, and brought to the council. The council gave me choices... the first time in my life that anyone had. Return to the master I'd fled from. Die in the streets I'd been found in. Or travel to the fighting pits, and state that I wished to train to be a fighter. The choice back then... it seemed so obvious..."

Soundwave's voice trailed off and he didn't speak anymore. But Firestorm sat for another long moment, shuddering in horror at the tale he had told. He may not have finished the story, but she could easily finish it herself, from her understanding of history. She knew that this bot, still not even legally quite an adult, and who had never known a single combat move, and had never raised a fist before, had trained brutally and violently against other young bots, many likely much bigger, many likely meaner and stronger, until he learned to fight for his very life. She knew he'd fought and battled, fell to the ground time again in pools of his own bleeding energon, until one day he started winning. And then his youngling-hood was over and his innocence was gone. Years, and quite possibly many centuries later some bot he'd trained with when they had both been younglings, some bot that in a far more perfect world may have been his friend, had melted his face-plate and destroyed his optics, in some savage hope of killing him.

Neither one of them knew exactly what to say then. So for many moments, no one said anything at all. Instead they simply sat on the ground in the valley, calmly watching Laserbeak, who flew high above in wide excited circles, clearly enjoying her time to fly around a bit. She landed to sit with them on the ground, just as she had taken to doing. And Firestorm happily obliged her with a pat on the head, before the bird simply flew off again.

"Why'da ya talk'ta me 'bout these things?" Firestorm asked slowly, as the bird flew off again. "I mean...I'don' mind'it. I like ta listen to'ya."

"Firestorm – helpful listener," Soundwave answered simply, his language pattern reverting right back into his simplified shorthand, now that he again used short sentences.

Firestorm had lived on the Autobot base for a good while by then, staying in a room down the same hallway as his own, far down at the opposite end. He talked to her often. And quickly it had became her that he talked to more than anyone on base. He supposed it was because she liked to listen to him. And her near constant smile, her way of laughing at things that most bots found far from funny, it amused him. And he was only still growing used to being amused by anything.

"Ya... Okay'thouhg?" Firestorm's simple question was asked in obvious concern. And she sat for a moment, just looking up at him with slightly wider open optics.

"I am... becoming moreso, the longer I live peaceful neutrality," Soundwave explained very slowly. He was sure his wording was awkward, and it made less then perfect sense. But it was truely the best he could do at that moment. And Firestorm only smiled her understanding, which gave him confidence again.

"Ya'faction symbols..." Firestorm said after a moment, and clearly she was putting in ever more effort than before to speak even more clearly, trying to make her own damaged possessor work like she wanted. And slowly, her constantly trembling hand gestured vaguely toward what it was she was talking about. "Sure'ly just'bad, reminda now..."

Soundwave only nodded his head slightly. So slightly in fact that he wondered if Firestorm even noticed the motion at all, as he considered the possibility where he never had before. He wondered then if Laserbeak, though he had never indicated anything at all about it through their telepathic link, felt anything of the sort about hers. And firmly he resolved that later he would ask her.

"Confession -" Soundwave said, speaking again abruptly, and changing the subject. "I once called you an annoyance when I first knew of you."

He worried for less than a second that perhaps she would be mad. And perhaps if she was it would be rightly so. But Firestorm was laughing instead. And she smiled while she shook her head.

"Well that'd har'ly be'da worse'thing anyone's said'ah'mee," she said, mumbling more than usual because she was still laughing a little while she talked. But slowly she gathered her composure, and finally she looked up at him, serious again, as she slowly explained. "Bots on'the ship... well some'of'em... They said I'shouldnt'a lived afta'I'fell, an'was damaged. They comdem'my brother'Windstorm, 'cause he refused'ta let'me be oflined. One'of'em a bot'named Raodtrip, he'was the loudest about'it..." What Firestorm was speaking about was obviously serious. But suddenly the little bot's face-plate turned again to a smile, which fast became laughter. And after a moment, through her laughs, she exclaimed, "one'day in'da mess'hall, W...Windstorm, he'd'had just'bout'nough. He... he jump right'up an'he... he punched'im right'in da'face-plate!"

"Functionalist thinking – foreseen for certain end with New Cybertron and reintegrated society," Soundwave said. He tried hard through his tone to give her confidence, though it was more than clear she did not exactly need that sort of assurance then. "You will always have what anyone has now." He sat for a moment just musing out loud. "You can earn your own credits, pursue higher education, socialize... find a bot to love one day."

Firestorm's optics unexpectedly shifted, and she stared a second down toward the ground, with an expression that was abruptly almost sad.

"But I...I'think..." she said, looking up again, still too sadly. "I'think I'could love... you..."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"See, that wasn't so bad, now was it?" Ratchet said chuckling to Runway, the small first-frame youngling flyer, who sat up pouting on the closest repair table.

Ratchet turned away just a brief moment so that he could rummage in the drawer of his worktable. And when he pulled out a couple of colourful energon sweets on sticks, the youngling's pouting face-plate turned to a grin. He grabbed eagerly for the treat, when the old bot offered one to him. And once he had it, Ratchet turned quickly to Runway's twin, Takeoff, likewise pouting in his carrier's arms behind the repair table. The second youngling, reached for an offered sweet with the eagerness of his brother. And quickly he was smiling too.

"Now that's much better," Ratchet chuckled. He picked up Runway from the repair table, and turned, smiling to hand him to his carrier, who shifted the other youngling he held already, in order to balance him too with his other elbow. Both of the little ones talked to each other now in some inaudible babbling and ever more simply but real words, while both sucked happily between words, on their lollipops. After a brief moment of this, they traded sweets and happily enjoyed each other's. Because the sweets were after all, very different flavors.

"And that's all there is to it really, 'Bee" the old medic told his young student with another chuckle, after he'd taken a moment to talk medical needs with the twins' carrier, and another moment of casual chat with him, exchanging pleasantries that pertained mostly to how well the twins were doing. "Antivurus immunizations for both of them, and neither one seems to hold the least bit of a grudge against me."

"The real trick is in the lollipops, I'm sure," Bumblebee answered quickly, laughing.

At present, six rooms on the inpatient ward were occupied by ten patients. And Bumblebee was busy at that moment, filling energon containers from the dispenser in a corner of the medbay, and loading the filled containers onto a wheeled push-cart, so that he could take morning fuel to each one of them.

"I'm sure you're right," Ratchet said, chuckling again under his intakes. His voice turned serious then and he continued, "You remember that both bots in room three are still on medical grade energon?"

"Got it," 'Bee said quickly. He gestured with a hand to a couple of containers at the back of the cart, seperated from the rest by a gap, and filled with much brighter lighter blue.

"Nice work."

"Hey... Ratchet?"

"Hmm?"

"Speaking earlier of younglings; do you think you could take a look at mine and Speedy's youngling frame later. Speedbreaker can build a lot of things, but she's never built a frame before of course. She's been talking so often, about how she wants to be sure that ours is more than good enough."

"I'd be more than happy to look it over for you two." Ratchet smiled then

When the young bot walked away pushing the cart out the door and into the hall to go and fuel the patients, the old medic stood a moment alone in the medbay, simply deciding what it was he should get to doing next. He decided on some restocking work and quickly he got to it, checking supplies of bandages and thin sheets of bendable metal a cupboard to his left, and hurrying then to a storeroom in the back to bring over more. He hummed away as he worked, recalling the tune of yet another folk song he'd sang in his near youngling days. And he smiled to himself happily, as he did. Slowly he recalled at least some of the words to the old song, the refrain anyway, and then a little of the second verse. The song had been written in the old formal Cybertronian language. And few bots spoke that anymore, far better versed instead in the informal common, that had taken over as an official language so many centuries ago. But he sang the words he knew slowly, recalling just how they fit into the tune of the song, remembering at least in part, how to speak the old language he'd once been brilliant at.

The sound of footsteps and the sliding of the door as it opened and then closed again, made the old bot turn to look in its direction. He stopped his singing when Soundwave walked slowly, deliberately, into the medbay. Laserbeak sat this time, perched on his shoulder.

"Soundwave," Ratchet said, nodding to the other bot in simple greeting. And his optics moved to the bird as he went on politely, nodding to her too. "Laserbeak."

"Song – ancient tale of the roadside merchant who dared claim the daughter of the ruler of Iacon city for a bondmate," Soundwave said slowly. Clearly he knew the the song that Ratchet had been singing, and he'd recognized its story. Ratchet only nodded simply.

"Not the most happy of folk songs, I suppose," he muttered, frowning as he remembered the end. "I do believe the merchant was swiftly off lined by the wealthy bot chosen already, by the ruler for his daughter."

"Young femme – sparkbroken – ended life by her own hand," Soundwave finished.

"All this makes me wonder," mumbled Ratchet, with a dismayed shake of his head, "why it is the world once so loved to sing that, of any song."

"So then" he went on, looking right at him again, with professionalism. "What is it that brings you here?"

"Decepticon faction symbol – no longer desirable," Soundwave explained simply. And Ratchet nodded his understanding.

"Let me take a quick look at that," he said, gesturing slightly to the symbol in question. And after a moment he looked up again at Soundwave. "A good bit of power sanding, maybe a little grinding, should take that right off your body armour. Then of course a slight bit of repainting would be required. All perfectly quick and painless."

"Inquiry – have you time today, or do I need to make an appointment?"

Just a few short months before, Ratchet might have almost assumed soundwave was making his best attempt at joking around, with his question about making an appointment. But things were different now. The old medic, who for centuries had put his medical energies almost exclusively into repairing damaged Autobot soldiers, had a steadily growing influx of civilian patients with an endless variety of mundane, common medical complaints. And in non-emergency cases, many of those did indeed book appointments. It let him know more than anything, just how much the returning bots of Cybertron truly did need a hospital to go to, and though there were days it seemed almost overwhelming with just how many needed one for just as many reasons, Knockout was never unwilling to see any that had issues needing mostly simple scans and medical advice, and did not require two steady and able bodied hands. Ratchet just smiled with happiness most days at simply knowing, no matter how busy it sometimes became, he was doing the service he'd once become a medic in order to do.

"An appointment? No no, it's fine," Ratchet said, with a pleased smile and a shake of his head. "For the first time in days now, it's actually quiet in here. Barring any emergencies of course, I think I can deal with this for you right now."

"Thank you."

"Should I assume you are here for the very same reason?" Ratchet asked next, addressing the bird that sat on Soundwave's shoulder. She rode on him for easy transportation, yes. That much was certainly obvious. But her posture; one of interest, and the simple fact that she had not yet flown away to seek a makeshift perch somewhere close by, told him that indeed Laserbeak had business of her own in the medbay.

Soundwave nodded in reply to that, and Ratchet knew more then well enough by then that he was simply translating for her, something that he had heard somehow from her silent voice that only he could hear.

"Not a problem," He said, nodding back. He gestured toward a repair table near the back of the medbay. "Give me just a minute to gather some tools, and I'll get to it, if you wanna take a seat up there. And I'm going to call down to the workshop..." Wheeljack was in there, working through a short list of tasks already, he remembered gladly. Surely one more simple job would be little trouble at all. "...See if I can't get a bit of paint mixed to match your colours."

"So, why today?" He asked after another moment, making conversation while he dug in a low cabinet for the right kind of stiff sandpaper, then reached toward the worktable behind him for the sander to put it into. "What made you decide this was finally the day?"

"We had... reasons to consider things," Soundwave answered simply.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"Let's hurry," Arcee exclaimed, to her bondmate. And she tugged playfully at his left arm – the one not being used to hold their little one - just slightly, to urge him move just a little faster, and with little regard for the fact that he couldn't exactly drive his cart with her pulling like that. That and of course it was causing him to move far slower instead of faster. "The last thing we want is to be late." And she walked slowly and backwards, while he and the cart moved very slowly forward, just as much as he felt even slightly safe at without any ability to actually steer anywhere with his hand control.

"Arcee. I can't exactly drive anywhere like this," he reminded her laughing, after just a couple moments of struggling with his hazardous lack of steering. And promptly, with a laugh of her own at the realization, she let go of his arm.

"Go! Go!" Cybershock exclaimed from her place still sitting on her creator's lap, and laughing now, mostly because her parents were. She always had liked it when he drove as fast as he could go, whenever they went outdoors.

"I'm going, I'm going," Knockout answered his youngling, still laughing as he did. He was still far from his cart's top speed, but he did get the machine up to a decent pace, with Arcee walking easily beside him.

"So, how was work?" Arcee asked, making cheerful conversation as they continued down the sidewalk.

"Wonderful today actually." Knockout smiled brighter.

"Your work makes a such a remarkable difference to the people." Arcee grinned in his direction while the kept right on moving forwards. And without missing a step she leaned over to grab for his shoulder panel quickly before she let go again. "And you, who once insisted you were better at breaking bots then fixing anyone... you're helping save lives everyday."

"Well," Knockout answered with another little laugh and a dismayed shake of his head. "Not everyday exactly. Medical practice is, at least in general, for more mundane than that usually. And thank Primus for that, of course."

"But you have a hand in making bots' lives better," Arcee persisted. And her smile grew bigger. "Never stop being proud of that."

"Go! Go go go," Cybershock demanded in another second or two, still obviously wanting her creator to drive faster while he carried her on his knees.

She was growing up already. And more so it seemed with every passing day. She'd been speaking for a while, still mostly one word of her steady growing vocabulary here and there. But more and more now, her simple language was becoming short sentences, that most often made sense. And she was determined to walk – pulling herself up onto anything she could in order to stand for as long as she could until she fell down, usually laughing about it. She loved to hear her story books read to her (and Knockout in particular loved to read them to her in silly voices with added sound effects,) and it was clear she understood what it was he was reading by now. She would not by tiny forever. There was no way to ever deny that. But in the moment her parents wanted only to enjoy her childhood right along with her.

"Arcee," Knockout exclaimed, grinning while he moved again to bump the hand control of his cart forward, as his foot pressed down against the foot pedal. "Jump on!"

And jump on she did. Laughing, she stepped up quickly to balance with her feet on the narrow support bar behind the cart's back wheels, holding on with both hands, each one reaching around the back of the cart, to hold onto the backs of the armrests. Arcee's weight did add some slight drag to the cart, and of course it could not reach it's full speed with her holding on. But she was light enough not to make _that_ huge a difference. And he could still go fast enough. Indeed, he was quickly moving at a near the speed of a bot's slow run, within several seconds. And he kept right on going like this, into their first intersection, and carefully but quickly crossed the empty road that led away from the base, with no trouble.

They reached 'downtown' only to find it more crowded than it usually was, with bots walking both ways on the sidewalk, while many others rolled, in vehicle modes along the roadway. And several bots, some who had once mocked and pointed, laughing in Knockout's direction when he ventured just as regularly out into the city many months before, only nodded politely in greeting, and mumbled friendly 'good day's to he and his bondmate as they passed each other. Some still stared of course, and more still pointed, laughing at least a little. There would always be some in every crowd. And a few just looked at the little family blankly, making it entirely clear that they simply didn't know how to react to a red optic'd badly damaged bot at all. For the most part though the bots of the city had simply stopped being shocked by now and had learned to be comfortable with just being decent neighbours.

Arcee hopped easily off the back of the cart, to the good natured laughs of a couple of passing civilians, after Knockout had slowed down for safety's sake amid the crowd. And she walked beside him for a while, past a still growing number of shops and bars, and offices, the bank, and the social hall. A recreation centre had finally opened its doors across the road recently, and a small crowd of bots hurried toward it, heading likely for their workouts in its gym.

"My work is certainly nothing like it once was," Arcee mused, carefully steering the conversation back into it's original direction, and with some degree of uncertainty. Knockout nodded his understanding of that, perfectly aware of exactly what it was she was talking about.

There was still a military obviously. And bots could most certainly still serve in it. She certainly did. But the work had become so very different. Without a war to fight, or an enemy to defeat while staying steps ahead of, it felt like the enemy now was the endless data pad work that landed on her worktable. There were certainly still daily patrols to do. But those now meant more or less patrolling the city now and then for trouble makers, and doing the work of a still yet to be formed police force.

"The youngling centre will be finished construction soon," Arcee gestured in the roughly direction of the place she was referring to, right beside the recreation centre. It's outside was completed already and it awaited only the finishing touches to the inner structure. "I would have been an early educator if only the world had not gone to war... Ratchet and Bulkhead both say, I'd be a wonderful choice for a bot to run the preschool..."

"You surely know I'd support your choice, no matter what you want to do in life," Knockout said, smiling as much as ever. "If you're really contemplating a career change, well then I'd say that's great."

"Go!" Cybershock exclaimed once again, when Knockout stopped his cart at the edge of the next intersection. And he and Arcee waited with a couple of strangers at the edge of a recently painted crosswalk, while bots, driving in all manner of vehicle modes passed by on the streeet.

"I can't go," Knockout told the youngling, laughing a little. And he gave her the very simplest of life's little lessons. "It's not safe to cross the road now."

"No go," Cybershock said. She looked up at him then with an almost silly look of agreement on her little blue metal face-plate.

"Yep. No go," Arcee confirmed nodding at the youngling. And beside her, a stranger waiting too, chuckled under his intakes, and smiled politely.

The lights changed and the little family started off again, crossing the road and into a district of closely packed apartment buildings. The first entire block of these, many ten or fourteen floors high, were already at least close to full entirely. But one more block up, across a road that led still nowhere in one direction and out to a far off energon mine in the other, were still more just slightly newer buildings. And of these ones, many were still half empty. Arcee excitedly pulled open the door to one of them when they reached it, a huge bluish coloured structure. And grinning, she ran on inside.

"Down! Down!" Cybershock exclaimed, just as soon as Knockout had rolled into the large and mostly empty atrium behind his mate. Seeing no real harm in it, Arcee lifted the baby quickly from Knockout's lap and set her down, sitting on the clean and shiny atrium floor.

No one was waiting to meet them. But after a very short wait, they could hear the sound of heavy footsteps, hurrying away from a maintenance room across the open space. And a bot - a former vehicon trooper who had chosen at some point to be repainted a cheerful bright green, and had named himself Blastoff – working for the housing commission, hurried toward them.

"I'm terribly sorry," Blastoff expalined, on seeing that they were already clearly waiting for him. "Troubles this afternoon with an oil tap in 401..." He'd held his right hand thusfar behind his back. And now, slowly bringing it around to the front of his frame again, he held out a blue energon lollipop for Cybershock. The youngling stared a second just blinking at him, amused, before she gave a tiny sequel of delight and reached up to gently accept the sweet.

"Thank you," Arcee said to the housing-bot, smiling. She quickly scooped up her youngling, who was already making a sticky mess of her face-plate sucking happily on the sweet. And again she tugged with her free hand on Knockout's arm, trying playfully as before to pull him forward after her.

"Let's roll," Knockout answered with a laugh and a grin. And when she let his arm go again, he rolled on across the atrium, following Blastoff, who led the way to the elevator.

"Tenth floor," the housing-bot said politely, when the elevator came to a stop moments later. "Off we get."

"Here it is," Arcee said, excited when they stopped before a locked door number with a shining 1014 on its door. She'd seen the place before of course. And several times in fact. But she was speaking mostly to the now sticky youngling she still held. "Our home."

"'Ome, 'ome!'" the baby yelled too loudly, in response to her carrier's excitement.

"I'll give you the key cards for the place today," Blastoff explained, with a chuckle at the baby. "You can start moving in tomorrow as planned, if that still works for you."

"The modifications for accessibility are all fully functional and should match the list that Bulkhead gave me from his construction notes," the housing-bot went on, as he led the way inside. "If you need to test out the equipment, go for it of course."

Arcee was sure that Knockout would at least test out the voice controls for the lighting, or some related thing. And certainly he would be interested in the wash station, which was actually more than big enough for his cart to turn around in, negating the need for anymore awkward backing it out, and nearly clipping counter corners time and again. But he didn't. Instead he just sat on the cart exactly where he'd stopped it, inside the doorway, parked next to the energon refiner, and facing toward the closed set of wide patio doors clear across the still empty living room.

"Knockout?" Arcee said, perhaps a little too loud and urgently. Quickly she put the baby down, letting her sit on the floor in the middle of the room, before she back back to step toward her mate.

It had been months now since his last random reboot. And she had almost dared by then to hope they'd seen the last of them. They both did.

His last one – and she remembered it all too well – had happened perhaps days after their young human friends and left to return to Earth. He had gone suddenly into reboot without any warning at all, while their baby was happily on his lap, waiting for the bath her carrier had been running in the wash station. Arcee had found Cybershock perhaps half a minute too late, still sitting up on her creator's knees, visibly scared and crying in steady high pitched cries of alarm as he, entirely unconscious and still belted into his cart, could not acknowledge her. But as more time passed without another one after that, than ever had before, and then that time doubled and tripled, it begun to look hopeful. Then it looked possible. Then slowly they let their constant guards down a little at first and then more and more.

"I'm good," Knockout said, understanding at once what it was she had been so fearfully thinking, when she hurried closer to him. He looked at her again, with a smile that turned quickly much bigger.

"I'm just..." he mumbled happily, still smiling. Slowly he rolled forward a very short ways, before moving much faster, across the living room, and toward those big glass doors.

"Arcee," He exclaimed then, grinning, "we have patio doors. Just like we dreamed this place!" Turning quickly, he rolled fast down a long hallway leading away from the living room. "Ooh, our recharge room is a fair bit bigger than on base. And its going to be perfect when we finish unpacking. Come down here. Check this out. I think we should move the recharge station so the head of it is against this big window. And Cybershock is going to love her room. You actually convinced Bulkhead's building crew to paint it pink for her? Ha, I suppose it would hardly be hard to do. 'Bulk would do anything for his favourite little bot. I love the wall boarders. Who says a baby girl can't have checkered flags, hey! Arcee, Cybershock, come check this out!"

"I am correct then in assuming the apartment is satisfactory?" questioned Blastoff a moment later. He stayed standing just inside the doorway. And it clear by then that he was trying his best not to burst out laughing.

"More than satisfactory," Arcee answered, grinning. "Thank you."

"Well you hardly need to thank me," Blastoff answered, happily. He paused just a second before he explained. "Maintaining this building, keeping these apartments filled... it really is a true labour of love. As a simple vehicon, model S-7, the whole point of my existence was little more than to follow orders without question, and of course to serve as canon fodder. Bulkhead trained me to do a job, yes. But the job gave me a true purpose in this new world."

Cybershock had been left to sit happily on the floor of the still almost empty living room, while the adult bots talked. And slowly she'd made her way, crawling, toward the energon dispenser back out close to the doorway, and next the apartment door, which was thankfully closed. Promptly she'd pulled herself up to standing,reaching out and holding onto the firmly mounted dispenser for balance. And for a long moment, she just stood like that, giggling over her creator, who shouted his excitement down the hall, and watching her carrier as she chuckled because of just that.

Finally she let go of the dispenser, first with just one hand and then the other. And instead of dropping back down to sitting on the floor, Cybershock took one step forward , arms out beside her searching for balance. She stood just a second then, one step away from her hand holds and grinning, before she quickly took at least seven more steps across the room and then she fell down.

"Cybershock," Arcee exclaimed, spark pounding as watched her. "Oh my goodness. Look at you go!"

Crossing the room quickly, Arcee gently took her youngling's hands as the body reached up for her, and just as gently she pulled the baby back onto her little metal feet. She barely held the youngling up at all, instead letting her simply hold loosely to her fingertips to find her own balance again.

"Knockout," she called, now far too loudly herself down the hallway. "Come and see what our youngling can do."

With a confused look on his face-plate rolled back out of the youngling's room and turned his cart in the hallway. Just as soon as she saw him come back, and he rolled slowly toward her, Cybershock took off again, taking seven more steps, toward him this time, before she fell down again laughing.

 **Notes/ I'm close as anything now to wrapping this up. This mostly pure fluff chapter is second from the last chapter of this entire story. And the closing chapter is fully planned out. I just need to write it, and I'll be starting to very soon. Even though I do of coruse have that one more to go, I still want to post thanks here to everyone for following this one and for early waiting for more or it. I would not have thought that first the thing I ever wrote for the Transformers Prime fandom, would become my most successful fanfiction... And yet it did.**


	47. Chapter 47

"You guys missed out on a great night out last night," Smokescreen remarked, laughing loudly. He idly kicked a large red ball up into the air with the front of his foot, and managed to catch it in his hands. "That club has got to be this city's hot spot for the very best and the brightest of the good looking single bots. And it's amazing just how many seem to have a thing for a bot in the military... and it's more than obvious Bulk' and Wheeljack had a great time, even if you did decide to be party poopers!" He laughed again, louder and kicked the ball in Bumblebee's direction.

But the black and yellow bot did not share in his laughter as he stopped the ball with one foot and kicked it back and forth a moment from one foot the other.

"I didn't miss out on anything," he said, with an almost amused shake of his head, as he booted the ball back to his teammate with a sudden hard kick. "I've got the beautiful bot I want to spend my life with waiting for me right at home. So does Knockout."

"Yep." Knockout only grinned at that, before he shook his head just slightly at the silliness of the whole conversation. "And I think everyone in the city knows I'd never trade her for the world."

"Next time I talk to you two old family bots, you'll be watching game shows and comparing prices on eco-wash stations," Smokescreen laughed again joking, as he stopped the fast-kicked ball, And went back to tossing it around over his head.

The three of them, each one on a break from his own tasks somewhere or other on base, had been killing time together, at the edge of the courtyard, where the high fence had once sat. And kicking around a random red ball for no rhyme or reason.

"Seriously though, I'm not sure I'd mind settling down too," Smokesceen mused. He dropped the ball back to the ground and gave it a good kick towards Knockout, barely even needing to think before he kicked it right toward his feet, so that he could kick it back with his right. "Just as soon as I find that certain someone, I'm done with this partying."

"Ha, not me." Wheeljack, sitting on a nearby bench, with his feet propped up on a some discarded chuck of scrap metal, while he looked over a data pad, chimed in with a laugh. "Hey, don't get me wrong. I like a good lookin' bot as much as anyone. But a nagging bondmate waiting up for me? Not my idea of a good time."

"Ah, come on," Bumblebee laughed slightly with a shake of his head in his teammate's direction. "Speedbreaker has never once nagged anyone. I don't think she's got a nagging wire in her frame."

"Haha, give her a century or so," Wheeljack laughed again.

"Carrying for months, and due any day," 'Bee countered firmly, "and Speedy's never so much as lost her temper and snapped at anyone. Least of all me, who you'd think would be the first to be snapped at. I tell ya, she's never gonna be that nagging mate."

"Young love," laughed Wheeljack. And his tone, though clearly still mostly joking around, turned quickly to a kind of mock cynicism. "It's always perfect at the start. And younglings? Now I know we all love Cybershock around here. There s not one bot on this base who doesn't spoil that kid rotten. Primus knows I do it just as much as everyone else. And soon it's gonna be the very same for 'Bee and Speedy's little bot. But younglings of my own? Crying all night, spilling their energon all over the floor...another of those 'not my things'"

"You guys are crazy," Smokescreen chuckled under his intakes, while he shook his head at both of his debating teammates.

"Knockout." 'Bee laughed a little as he tapped his red teammate's shoulder panel without turning to look at him. "Come on. Back me up here! You and I, we're team 'family bots.'"

"I...I'm sorry?" Knockout mumbled in reply. And Bumblebee turned to see him look up, blinking.

"Ha!" Wheeljack laughed again. The ball, kicked last by Smokescreen, rolled toward him slowly, and he picked it up from the ground, tossing it back in the general direction of the other three. "He's not gonna get involved in this one." And he turned just slightly to look directly at Knockout, mumbling with another laugh, "good call on that one."

"M...me?" Knockout questioned, clearly confused as he gestured too vaguely toward his own chest panel, confirming that it was him that was being spoken to.

"Yeah, you." Wheeljack only laughed again for a second, before he paused a second and looked at the red bot seriously for a second more. "You okay?"

"I... I... my... head..." Knockout began to explain slowly. Or at least he tried to. And he reached up with his right hand, obviously meaning to gesture slightly, just as someone might in order to indicate a sudden headache. But in trying that simple motion, his hand instead smacked lightly against his own face-plate, before it waved behind him, somewhere far over his left shoulder.

"I need... I need to... I... _buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz_." His vocals went completely to static in the midst of his moment of confused mumbling. And in the next second he was sitting perfectly still on his mobility cart, optics wide open and sheer terror more than clear in an otherwise nearly vacant expression.

"Someone please help me." Bumblebee had moved almost at once to kneel on the ground in front of Knockout's cart, the very second he'd began to behave so strangely. And he reached now for the med scanner he was never without anymore, as he gave a quick order, taking charge without looking up. "We need to get him onto the ground."

"Long time without any reboots," Smokescreen mumbled, uneasy. Anxiously he exchanged uncertain looks with Wheeljack over 'Bee's head. "And it's just gotta be a serious one now, while's he's on shift."

"He'll be fine in a minute," Wheeljack answered back calmly. He stepped forward to help Bumblebee, as he'd asked, and both his tone of voice and his quick movements were calm and collected. But when Knockout suddenly screamed – a high pitched static filled noise of completely and utter panic through an obviously still glitching vocalizer – he was the next bot to cringe with unease.

"Can you keep your optics open," 'Bee said firmly, as he and his teammate lifted carefully, though quickly as they could from the cart, and placed him laying flat on the metal ground in front of it. And with a hand lightly shaking the red bot's shoulder panel as he powered up his scanner, he commanded again with greater urgency. "Optics open for me. You're okay."

"Where is Arcee?" 'Bee asked anyone who may have known, and he barely looked up as he did so.

"She... she's setting up their apartment," Smokescreen's answer was shaky now as he obviously grew increasingly nervous about a situation that was looking steadily worse instead of better. "At least that's what she said to me when she left work early today. They... they are moving in tomorrow."

"Find Arcee," Bumblebee said, seriously. "And comm Ratchet on your way. Tell him I need him out here _now."_

"This doesn't look like just another reboot to me," Wheeljack said, as Smokescreen roared away from them and the base, already in his vehicle mode.

Knockout might well have lost consciousness quickly in the case of processor rebooting, only to wake up again quickly, tired, confused more than likely, but otherwise fine. This was different entirely. His optics blinked and blinked by now, but he still remained at least partly awake. And he just went on screaming, louder now than before, though the vacalizer static which never did go away again. His body began to shake and tremble almost violently, and just to look at him a moment, to watch the look that remained on his faceplate and in his madly blinking optics, it was to clearly that a fair bit of that was from his degree of sheer panic and terror than from anything else.

"I need you to try and calm yourself a bit, okay?" 'Bee said firmly. He felt his own processor slowly tuning out a fair amount of the outside world and anything irrelevant, as he focused hard on remembering everything he'd ever ben taught so far in his training. And as he spoke, calmly and slow, he knew he could only hope that Knockout could indeed still understand and comprehend a word he said. "I know this is well beyond horrible, but we're going to do everything we can do. You're still okay."

"I don't think this is a reboot," he continued, his tone hushed now as he turned to talk a second to Wheekjack, who remained where he was, kneeling nearby on the ground. "He's going back into processor failure. And worse still; Arcee said once, that he still remembers so much of the last time this happened." The young bot, for all of his collected calmness and his determination to do everything right in yet another time it really mattered, sat on the ground then a second just shaking his head. "Why now, why today? His first home tomorrow, a child that just started walking..."

Bumblebee was pulled at once from his brief second of despair, when Knockout suddenly purged his fuel tank quite violently over the ground, and himself. Quickly the small black and yellow bot, thinking quickly, indeed worked almost without a need to even think at all. He grabbed his teammate quickly and pulled his body into his side, just in time for him to purge his tank twice more before his optics stopped blinking abruptly.

Knockout looked then at his friend and teammate, who held him lightly in his side-turned position. His shaking slowed just a little, and his optics appeared to focus at least a little bit more. His stronger hand, the one that could move to do so at all, reached again toward his head, and in despair of his own, he mumbled almost incoherently, '"pain... hurt... I can't..."

His vocalizer just a second after that went right back to buzzing horribly again. And his body began to shake, this time clearly just as much from the a constant misfiring of processor commands, as from his still present terror.

* * *

"I can't lie, Arcee," Ratchet said, he leaned hard against the door, right next to the closed medbay doors, and that, right along with the look on the old bot's face-plate, showed her without any doubt, just how devastated he felt, even as he spoke so calmly. "The situation. It's not good."

Arcee stood in the hallway, her hold on Cybershock- who sat quiet in her arms - perhaps a bit too tight. Her spark pounded in her chest with fear and dread, with determination, denial and focus.

"Knockout was perfectly conscious when I got to him out in the courtyard." Ratchet went on speaking, explaining just as much as he could, as quickly as he could manage to, while Arcee just stood staring up at him with a blank look on her face-plate and her youngling in her arms. "And he's still not fully lost consciousness yet. It's so different now from the last time. I'm convinced of course that smashing his head and face-plate off a stair rail, with enough force to bend the railing during his original malfunction, may have been the biggest reason he was so entirely out of it then. Still even that considered, it's already much worse and so fast. He's lost a great deal of any physical function, his internal systems are going down, and he's clearly in a great deal of pain and discomfort."

"Surely this is all fixable," Arcee ventured, holding out hope in the midst of her great denial, because hope was all she had and she knew that. "Just like it was before. I know it probably stands to reason he might be left even more damaged then before. But I think... no, I know, that no matter what, he'd want to live now... try his hardest, do our best... He'll get back to where he was... he's too determined not to."

"Arcee," Ratchet said firmly, interrupting her helpless rambling. And when she looked up at him again, blinking twice to regain her focus as the room began to spin. And she saw then the true degree of devastation and hopelessness on the old bot's face-plate. "Knockout was always physically weak after his last malfunction. We all know that. But I think all of us, myself included and perhaps most of all, overestimated just how much strength he actually had. He'd regained a fair bit of it, yes, thanks to all the rehab and his constant insistence on pushing his body just a little further when it said no more. But that can only go so far. I was able to repair him the last time, and with decent success, but you must remember how physically hard it was on him then. Just surviving recovery... well for a while it was amazing he did at all. Arcee, if I were to even attempt such a thing again, I fear we'd have but a two, possibly five percent chance, it wouldn't actually kill him. And those are just not acceptable medical odds."

"So..." Arcee's voice suddenly sounded so small, and instantly she was aware of that just as soon as she opened her mouth to speak again. And the baby in her arms, appeared at least on some level to understand the serious nature of the situation. Because suddenly she dropped her little head to rest on her carrier's shoulder panel, and started to cry loudly. Arcee bounced lightly on her feet, trying in vain to calm the distressed child, while she fought back her own emotions, trying hard to not distress her little one even more. "What _do_ we do?"

"We give a while," Ratchet explained slowly. "Same as before, there's still a chance that if resting calmly his processor will go into self repair. That would obviously be a very good thing. Otherwise, give me some time to think this over. We are still in unknown territory with this case to begin with. We've been flying by our tailpipes since he survived his first malfunction, and I'm not about to start giving up just yet." The old bot fell silent a moment, and he just looked at her sadly. Slowly he placed his right hand gently under Arcee's chin, and even more gently he urged her that way to look up at him. His other hand reached out for the crying youngling, and his fingertips held her tiny ones gently, as the baby's cries turned slowly to loud shaking sniffles.

"Whatever happens from here," he said slowly, and looking Arcee intently in the optics. "Remember, you've got that beautiful little one to raise. No matter what, she will surely grow up well aware of her parents' love for each other, and her creator's love for her."

"Can I... can I see him now?" Arcee almost begged, insisting just as soon as she found her voice again.

"Of course you can see him," Ratchet answered. He gave a hint of a professional smile of assurance at her, and finally he reached put to put his hand onto her shoulder panel. "You must understand though, he's in a pretty bad state, emotionally just as much as physically. He was in a state of near complete panic by the time I got outside to help. And it didn't let up at all when we brought him in. It was a job and a half just to get a decent assessment of his condition in the first place, because he was shaking in fright, and dangerously close to screaming in terror. I worked as fast as I possibly could, trying to hook up monitors, because we might just need them and I'd rather have everything running than not. And he just cried his optics out the entire time I worked with all of that. I decided in the end, our best choice was to give him high dose sedatives, which certainly did help. But now he's a bit slow, slower than he might have been under the circumstances, because of it. And there is still more I need to do, I left it at just as little as I could before I left it be a moment to give him a break, because he was so panicked. Even now, calmer and with so much medication, I fear he may just lose it on us again."

"Can he talk?" Arcee asked slowly.

"Yes and no," Ratchet said. And though that answered seemed strange of course at first, he quickly explained it. "His vocalizer is working just fine still. But his language dictionary and the connections that govern meaning are corrupted and badly already. So we've got a bot that can speak words just fine. But the words are not the right ones. He knows what he wants to say. I'm sure of that. But he'll open his mouth to speak and what will come out will be entirely nonsense, and usually unrelated."

"Oh..." Arcee gasped then, as more and more of the situation and just how bad things could get began to hit her and hard. But still, from some part of herself, a part trained in battle and used to forcing itself to deny and just keep on running forward, she found a sense of forced calm confidence and smiled a little, however shaky it might have been.

"I'll take the youngling and bring her to Bulkhead so he can watch her a while," Ratchet said quickly. Cybershock had started crying again, and Ratchet bounced her a little as he took her from her carrier gently. "Then I need to get back in there myself obviously." He was about to walk away then, clearly. But he turned around again to face her, and continued almost idly to gently bounce and rock the youngling.

"Arcee," he said seriously, with a look of assurance on his face-plate. And he placed he hand he had just moved away back onto her shoulder once again. "Try your best to be calm and collected for him."

"We've done this before," Arcee answered. And the confidence that she answered with seemed to come from nowhere now, yet she felt it anyway as she nodded her head slowly. "He went though all this once, and I did my best then..."

"He wasn't your bond-mate then," Ratchet reminded her gently, before he turned away, rushing off in a hurry.

Knockout was, at present, the lone patient inside the medbay. And Acree found him at once, on a recharge station in the back corner furthest from the doors. Already, he'd been connected to a handful of various machines, and their wires ran along the sides of the recharge station, tucked away as efficiently as possible to avoid too many running over his frame itself. Bumblebee stood nearby, staring with great focus at a readout on the screen of a spark monitor. And glancing that the same machine herself, Arcee, in her limited understanding of such a thing, could see that the readout did not look close to ideal. Knockout's spark, she could see pulsed at first far too fast. And it slowed abruptly to dangerous at the other end of the spectrum, only to speed up again and began to race, before dropping again. And as she stood a second more shaking her head at the monitor absently, 'Bee hurried over to her. He said not a word, but quickly he wrapped his arms around her, offering a fast hug of support before he backed away and then turned to cross the room in search of some supplies.

"Hey," she said, with a faked smile she hoped would only appear confidant enough. And she quickly took several steps closer to her bond-mate and the recharge station. "I got here as fast as I could." She reached out at once to take one of his hands in hers, and deliberately she grabbed the right, because it always had been the stronger and functional one. But now, he barely managed to squeeze hers back, grabbing instead at hers awkwardly with barely bending fingertips and less function even then she'd ever seen from the left.

"Climb slow speed-bump," he mumbled. He optics alone told her that what he said was urgent. But of course it made no sense at all.

"Filter not shiny blue," he tried again not a second later. His speech was slow, as Ratchet had said, and likely from the sedatives. But the words themselves, that was clearly so much worse and something bigger than that.

Arcee had thought for sure it wouldn't scare her, when Ratchet had warned her just how bad it was. But suddenly her spark dropped just a bit before it started pounding harder. And with his fingertips just barely managing to grab her hand, and just to keep holding on like that, it was obvious to her that he was trying to hold on much harder than that, and he simply could not.

"Rear door hatchback..." he mumbled, with at least a slight show of fear flashing in his optics then, as he stopped speaking again, clearly giving up when he knew he simply couldn't make it work. And his fingertips kept right on holding onto her hers just as hard as they could.

"I... I think I know..." Arcee mummered out loud to him slowly, thinking, trusting in her inner feelings to know she had gotten it right. She sat herself down quickly in a folding chair that had been left close by. Then slowly, careful of the wires that were seemingly everywhere, and each one important, she leaned over and wrapped her free arm around him as tightly as she could.

Tuning in slowly, carefully, to the small and subtle part of her processor that held a constant link to his, via their spark connection, she began to sense his feelings along with her own. It took a brief moment to unravel what was her own from what was his. But soon she had made it all make sense. Outwardly he appeared mostly calm by now. But in is own mind, and in hers when she listened, his panic still raged like a storm. And then there was more. Dread, regret, urgency over far too much to distinguish...

Arcee was entirely unsure what else she could do. She she just stayed exactly like she was, and simply held him a moment, and then a moment more. That, she knew quickly, was what he had been so urgently trying to ask of her in the first place. Focusing intently on the panic and the fear she felt so well and knew was not her own, she sent calmness and love back through their connection, only hoping that he would sense it himself. For long moments more, she didn't move and just kept on sending. And slowly, she sensed her mate's emotions shift a little, so that he was finally calmer, if only just a litttle. It was another long moment until she finally lifted her head from its place on his chest panel again. And with great reluctance, she slowly let him go.

For the first time since she'd hurried in, Arcee took a second or two to really look at her bondmate closely. And she saw at once that for as clearly sick he was, as inwardly damaged, and his condition so completely devastating, outwardly he still looked completely fine. She'd helped him to buff and shine his finish just that morning while he lay on their recharge station. And Knockout's buffed paint now bore only a couple of light scratches, more than likely, it seemed, from him being placed onto rough metal ground outside. And that, along with light thin trails of coolant on his face-plate that let her know just how badly he'd been crying from terror not long before, were the all that looked at all out of place.

She had assured Ratchet, still only a short time before, that she could indeed stay calm and collected. She'd promised him, and even herself that of course she could, and she would. But looking him over once again, truly noticing the wires around his frame from the monitors behind him, recalling how they'd given their youngling a light little buffing too, after he'd gotten onto his mobility cart... how the baby had giggled and grinned, and later she looked just as proud of her own shiny finish as her creator always did... A memory flashed through her mind then of just the day before – her mate racing his cart around a still empty apartment that was finally theirs, shouting down the hall, excitedly yelling out something about racing flags on the baby's room walls... It was then that coolant tears of her own came to her optics, And her promises meant so little.

She tried to look down to the floor, struggling to hide her tears as they flowed freely down her face-plate. But she couldn't couldn't force herself to move fast enough to do even that. And she fought hard to stop the tears as soon as they started. But she couldn't make them stop falling.

 _'Please... don't do that...'_ Knockout's voice spoke to her, sounding just slightly different somehow. And in the second it took for her processor to catch up and clue in, she realized that she was hearing his telepathic voice, the voice of his thoughts, speaking to her silently though their spark connection. His ability to physically speak to her may have been all but gone entirely – she'd heard all to well, how he tried and tried and still managed to only mumble random nonsense. But still his telepathic inner voice worked just fine and and he'd found a way he could talk to her. It was probably, she noticed, because of the medication; but even his inner voice though was just the slightest bit slow and lagging.

 _'Please don't cry. Please don't cry.'_ he said urgently, somewhere in her mind. His hand still held onto hers just as well as he could. He'd never once let it go yet since he'd grabbed it. _'You're so pretty when you smile.'_

"It... it wasn't supposed to be like this," Arcee cried, speaking out loud to him, and trying as hard as she could to stop her tears to no avail.

 _'We were supposed to move into our apartment, and have centuries together'_ she continued to herself. ' _we were supposed to watch the sunset from our balcony, and watch our daughter grow up_ _to be anyone she wants to be, because we both love her enough to let her.'_

' _You and_ _our baby, you'll make it on your own,'_ Knockout said to her, again in her head. His telepathic voice sound just slightly stronger now, and she realized only then to her shock and horror that he might have heard the thoughts she'd been thinking only for herself. _'The two of you, against the world. You'll teach her how to be amazing. And you, teaching in the preschool, just like you want to... you can inspire her to chase those dreams of hers..."_

"Arcee," Ratchet's voice, speaking somewhere close behind her made her turned just slightly so that she could look at him. And she realized, with a start, that she was not even heard him enter the medbay at all, or even heard his feet cross the floor. He had a push cart with him, and on it he carried medical supplies, which he must have fetched from a cabinet somewhere close by. But she hadn't heard him do that either. "I just need you to back up a bit. I've got a little more work to do, quickly."

Arcee stood up slowly from the chair she'd been sitting on, and she took a small step backward. But The look that showed at once in Knockout's optics, at clearly understanding Ratchet's intent to make his mate step away from him, was quickly one of complete dread and terror. His hand still held her fingertips, still just as tightly as he could possibly have done. And she lacked any spark to try forcing him to let go of her.

"I... I can't possibly leave him," Arcee said firmly.

"You're fine right there." Ratchet smiled slightly in assurance, and nodding his understanding. "A little bit of room to work is all I need."

"Door, metal cobalt, plane field," Knockout mumbled fearfully at the old medic. His words still made no sense at all, and Arcee knew just how unlikely it was that they ever would again. But the look that flashed again across his still wide open red optics, said so much. And that look showed nothing but fright again. "Brake dispenser, falling, windy morning..."

"It's alright, it's alright," Arcee said to him, urgently, trying hard to hold his focus, when he only stared at nothing with complete terror flashing through his optics, and his frame began to tremble again. After another second, she held his hand tighter, shaking it just a little and gently, while she said firmly, "Knockout. Look at me."

 _'Arcee,'_ his voice said in her mind, too fast and shaky. _'I'm afraid. I'm afraid! Please... please help me..."_

 _'Shhh'_ Arcee answered at once, talking back to him only through their telepathic link, instead of bothering to speak again out loud. _'I know. It's okay. Just keep looking right at me, okay.'_

 _'I... I can't do this again. Can't go through all this again. Too... horrible. I can't... My body, my head... it hurts so much...'_

Arcee understood instantly that her bondmate was not simply talking about a couple of simple emergency medical procedures. Processor scans, the attachment of a secondary energon line, and certainly the quick re-connection of a couple spark monitor wires that had been pulled loose accidentally, were all simple and run of the mill things that should not have made any bot more then just slightly uneasy, if they were prone to nerves in medbays. No. In his case, those simple things were triggering every flashback, and every terrible and vivid memory he had ever had of his last malfunction, and his own helpless awareness of slowly shutting down.

 _'One bridge at a time, okay?'_ she said to him silently. It was an Earth expression, something she'd heard humans say a lot about crossing their bridges one a time, that inspired her words. And she wondered for just a second if he would even understand the reference. But he smiled, or least it was clear he tired to, however shakily it might have been. And he gave her a look, through still fear-filled optics, that told her he trusted her.

 _'Cybershock!'_ Knockout almost screamed somewhere in her processor. And it was clear he'd almost forgotten entirely about his fear from the minor medical procedures, as he so urgently asked after his youngling daughter. His optics opened wider then even before, and he moved the very little he still could, so obviously trying to look around to find her somewhere.

"Bulkhead has the baby," Arcee explained. And once again, she spoke out loud. Her words made at least a bit of difference, because he blinked at her a moment and then finally his optics closed just a little. "He'll take good care of her for us, for now."

The second Ratchet stepped back, done with his work, at least for a while, Arcee dropped back into the folding chair, and lowered her head right back down to rest it against her mate's chest panel. Her free hand once again wrapped around him just as tightly as she could told on, and for a long while she just stayed like that. She payed closer attention again to anything he sent to her through their shared spark connection, and again she sensed fear and dread, though slightly less so by then. She sensed his urgency over their youngling, his love and concern, though he'd heard that of course she was alright. And behind all of that, there was strangely and growing confusion. A hazy kind of feeling to every thought she sensed, and she wondered, at first only in passing what that might have meant.

Knockout's right hand had held onto hers since she'd arrived. And he never had seemed in any hurry at all to let go of it. But suddenly he did. And all too abruptly at that. With her head still resting against his chest panel lightly, she felt his fingertips drops hers. And that was enough to make her sit up just as fast as she could so that she could look at him with her spark dropping quickly. His optics had closed entirely, and she realized only then, with a start, that she had stopped hearing anything of his inner voice or feelings.

"He's alright," Ratchet said, assuring her as he hurried closer to her again from behind. And the old bot rested his hand on her shoulder panel as she turned to look at him shakily. "He's in light recharge is all. It's the medication. I'm frankly surprised he was awake as long as he was." He gestured, half absently toward the monitors, and Arcee recalled only then that of course those would let anyone know if Knockout was or was not in any real trouble.

"Will he sleep long?" Arcee asked, uncertain if she hoped he would sleep as long as he could so that everything would surely be easier, at least for him; or if she hoped he would wake up so that could know for sure he was going to again.

"It's hard to say for certain. It won't likely be too terribly long. And hour, maybe two at most I would guess, Any longer and I'll need to wake him anyway to recheck processor functions. It'll be a while though surely." Ratchet looked at her with compassion in his optics, and once again she could see just how uneasy and saddened he was himself.

"Sit back a second," he ordered unexpected. And he reached quickly to a nearby worktable, to pick up his med scanner.

"Ratchet. I'm not a patient," she protested, dismayed as he scanned her once quickly and then promptly he did it again slower, the second she hesitantly sat back in her folding chair.

"You most certainly are, now," Ratchet answered firmly, and it was more than clear at once that he meant it entirely. "You're clearly in high stress. And though not without perfectly understandable and good reason, obviously, high stress is still high stress. You've been in spark failure once, and however small the danger is of this whole situation causing it again, I'm not about to take a single risk. The good news is you are currently just fine." he smiled then just slightly with obvious compassion and put a hand back onto her shoulder panel. "Arcee, why don't you go outside for a few minutes. I'm not going anywhere. And I don't think 'Bee is either. Get a little fresh air and have your afternoon fuel. Both will be the best thing for you."

Arcee shook her head firmly for a moment in refusal. But Ratchet had meant exactly what he said, and the look he gave her when she refused to get up told her so in no uncertain terms. Slowly she stood from the folding chair, and after she'd made him promise her four times that he'd comm the very second something happened, if anything did, she took a few slow steps to the doors of the medbay. When she paused again right where she was standing, Ratchet again cast her a look that surely could have killed her at once, had his optics been weapons, and slowly she walked out.

* * *

The air and the gentle breeze outside in the courtyard certainly was nice. And as much as Arcee did not want to admit it, she was glad for the sunshine, still overhead and bright in the early hours of the evening. She marvelled, almost startled that already the day was nearly gone. The morning had barely been over when she'd gotten the terrible call, in the midst of unpacking a box of datapads in her new home, that had brought her speeding toward the base and the medbay.

Distracted and shaking on the bench she tried to sit still on, she took a tiny sip from the energon container she held in her hands, not wanting to drink it, but well aware that she needed it, and more so because the excitement of her moving house had made her skip the morning. With her fuel tank flipping so badly inside her frame that she was almost sure she would purge it all over the ground, she chanced one more small sip, forcing herself by then, but determined only because she knew Ratchet would be so disappointed if she didn't even try.

"Mama," cried the voice of her youngling, from halfway across the courtyard. And Arcee looked up from her own thoughts, to see Bulkhead, walking slow on the path that led around the base, with the baby in his big strong arms.

Cybershock had so clearly been distressed and crying a moment before. Because tears stained her face-plate, her little voice shook with near sobs as she called out to her carrier, and the bot that held her as he walked was obviously anxious, and trying hard not to drop her as she wiggled.

"Arcee," Bulk' said, his tone uncertain as she slowly walked toward her with the little one. "I didn't know you'd be out here. Letting her see you right now might just make her feel worse, eh?" The big bot pulled the baby closer against him, and tried hard to bounce her in a way that would have been well beyond cute if the day wasn't so very upsetting.

"So" Bulk' said, searching for words as she sometimes seemed to when things seemed uncertain. "Smokescreen said that Knockout... well it might have been a reboot at first, but then it got..."

"It's not just a reboot," Arcee said, trying hard to explain, because he simply wanted to know. Everyone must have wanted to know by then, because Knockout was pretty well everybody's friend. But she simply couldn't explain it right then. She wasn't sure yet she fully understood the entire situation herself, except that it was terrible and going to get much worse.

"I'll take her, Bulk'" she said after another second to think, and a second more to berate herself just a little for hesitating, when the decision should have been easy. And quickly she reached out to take her child from her teammate.

"Arcee, if you need anything at all... if I need to take the kid for you again or something... comm me anytime."

"Thank you Bulk."

Back in her carrier's arms again, Cybershock calmed a fair bit. And after a moment of simply resting against her shoulder panel and sniffling, the baby lifted her head, looked around her again, waved at Bulkhead as he walked away, and even smiled a little when Arcee smiled at her. Quickly though her smile dissolved again into more little sniffles, and Arcee knew to her dismay that though she had certainly been trying to, she could not exactly hide her own distress from her youngling. At least not entirely.

"Let's go," she said to her little one, in a voice just as light and cheerful as she could manage to make it. "We're going to go see your creator."

"Excuse me, miss," said a voice, just as soon as Arcee had walked the pathway around a corner, heading back toward the front doors leading into the base. And she paused to see some elderly refugee stand up from the bench, she was sitting on outside the doors.

This bot truly was old. Certainly the oldest living Cybertronian Arcee had ever seen by far. And judging by the bandaged wrists and the carefulness of her steps as she walked toward her, the refugee was obviously a patient from somewhere inside the hospital wing of the base.

"Yes?" Arcee said to her politely. She felt inwardly like she didn't exactly have time to deal with this elderly bot right then. But how would the poor old refugee possibly have known that. Arcee was an Autobot and duty was duty.

"You must be Knockout's bondmate." the grey painted refugee said hesitantly. And when Arcee nodded, admittedly uncertain over what to make of the exchange by then, the old bot explained quickly. "Knockout pops in every morning to say hello and chat a moment while he makes his morning rounds. He's showed me pictures of his daughter, because he's such a proud creator of course. And so I recognized your little one here. She's such a beautiful youngling."

"Thank you," Arcee answered, still politely. And course she had to admit that she was just as proud a parent as her mate was.

"I... asked around a bit today, when Knockout didn't come back in today to close my window. He'd said he would later when he opened it again this morning, and something just seemed wrong to me. I've heard very little obviously but what I have heard, it's bad news."

Arcee only nodded at that. And the polite smile she'd forced onto her face-plate began to slowly disappear for a look more genuine than that. Whoever this very elderly bot was, it was more than clear she truly was concerned, that she had a good spark, and that somehow Knockout had made an impression on her, just as it seemed he had on so many others.

"May I include him in my prayers tonight? And you and that child of yours of course?" the refugee patient questioned after another second. And Arcee blinked once, startled and dismayed at that.

There had been a time once, when bots had prayed to Primus. Arcee knew that from history lessons and stories passed down by old bots from some long passed, who had been older still. But in her own time, it was simply not something anyone did anymore. And she blinked again at realizing with another start, just how old this bot may have been to have lived in the time when bots still prayed, to to possibly never have stopped.

"I think that Knockout would appreciate that," Arcee said smiling again at the old bot. After all, she reflected to herself, what could it possibly hurt? "Thank you."

Her commlink beeped suddenly, and the second she recognized the comm signature as that of the medbay, she stood up straighter again and turned to run back. The kind elderly bot clearly understood what had happened, or at least she glimpsed the urgency of it, because she just gave a polite nod of good bye, as Arcee turned to hurry back power walking.

"Arcee?" Ratchet questioned her with clear dismay, meeting her close to the doors, as she almost ran ran back into the medbay. He looked from her to the youngling now in her arms, and back again with a look that made it perfectly clear he did not exactly approve.

"Has Knockout woken up?" Arcee asked. In her spark dropping concern that he may have without her, she dodged the old medic's unasked line of questioning altogether.

"He's starting to," Ratchet's tone was calmer now, compassionate again. "Don't worry. He wouldn't have known you were ever gone." But his optics narrowed again in the next fraction of a second, and he looked again from her to her youngling. Quickly, almost under his intakes entirely, he mumbled, "Arcee, I'm really not sure she should be..."

"Cybershock needs to see Knockout too," Arcee countered firmly. Her mind was made up and no one would change it now. "He's her creator. She needs him. And he needs her more so."

"Fine fine," Ratchet mumbled, all the while shaking his head just a little. But his optics quickly softened again and Arcee knew he felt she was right. Sure enough he nodded then, and smiled slightly at the baby before he waved then on past him with a quick motion of his hand.

 _'Arcee? Arcee!"_ Knockout first questioned and then begged in quickly growing panic through their shared connection, before she was quite close enough to him that he could have seen her from the recharge station he lat flat on.

 _'It's alright,'_ she answered back, speaking silently again herself. She took several hurried steps to stand close to him again. _'I'm right here. It's okay.'_

"I've got someone here to see you," she said, speaking out loud now. And slowly she began to bounce just a little on the fronts of her feet almost unconsciously, as the baby in her arms began to whimper in fright, as her little blue optics looked around the medbay.

Knockout looked up at the youngling and he smiled then, a true and real grin that seemed to overtake his fear, at just seeing his daughter again. And he tried to reach up to her just a little, though his body of course could barely move at all.

"Scrapheap drink funny signs," he said, speaking slowly, determination showing in his optics, as though he might still make some sense if only he tried hard enough. His optics met the baby's, and he blinked several times, with a look that said he was struggling then in so many ways. Intently he stared at the youngling and urgently he mumbled at her, "Reverse city doors."

His despair at not managing to even call his own youngling, his only child, by her name – because clearly that's exactly what he'd tried so very hard to do – appeared to crush him far more than anything had so far. And for a second he blinked several times more with tears of coolant forming in his optics again.

The youngling, watching him in clear and obvious confusion at first, must have only wondered initially why it was her creator was mumbling utter nonsense at her. And she stayed still, in her carrier's arms watching him, baffled and listening to see what he might say next. But after a second more she clearly clued in that something was very wrong. Slowly she started to sniffle again, and ever more slowly she turned just as much as she possibly could, little arms reaching out to him just as far as she could reach, grabbing for his fingers just the way she'd always done. Devastation quickly filled her face-plate when he didn't move to let her.

"Dada..." Cybershock screeched horribly, as her little processor clearly tried its hardest to place exactly what it was that had happened to him. And coolant poured from her optics as she reached out again.

Arcee felt her own spark nearly breaking as she held her screaming, sobbing child. And she only hoped beyond all hope then that the hunch she'd followed in bringing the little one back with her, had been right after all. The baby's hands reaching forward a moment before, had now come to cling in terror to her carrier's left arm. And Arcee carefully coaxed her into letting go again, before she bent slowly forward, to set the child down, sitting on the recharge station her creator was laying on.

Cybershock may have been a child so young she could barely talk and had only just began to walk. But even at her young age she knew love and compassion, perhaps far better than some three times her age. She possessed innate understanding of weakness and of strength, and she could clearly demonstrate gentleness and patience when it was needed most of her. And indeed sure enough, just as soon as she was set down, she half crawled and half awkwardly wiggled a little so the she could be closer to her creator's nearly still frame. And still moving slowly, showing care seen mostly in children already much older, she lay down beside him, grabbed for his hand, and held it in both of her much smaller ones, while she snuggled tight against him and cried.

"U-turn river, quiet junk, wash station," Knockout mumbled at her helplessly, as his vocalizer started to buzz with static again over his nonsensical words. And he looked horrified now at his own condition, as his frame began to tremble again, though this time just slightly.

"Ah-tay, dada," said Cybershock, speaking as well as she could in her tiny little voice, and doing so with such surprising calmness. She lifted her head from the recharge station just enough to talk to him, to tell him in the the best way she could that it was okay, before she settled back down again.

"You were right it seems, Arcee," Ratchet's voice said, from somewhere close by again. And Arcee turned around, startled, as the old medic stepped up beside her. He spoke in hushed tones and gestured slightly to her mate and her child.

"She's the light of his life, and he's her super hero," Arcee answered simply, as tears threatened again, and stubbornly she forced them back. "How could I possibly not..."

"Ratchet," she said a second after she'd first let her words die out in mid-sentence, and changing the direction of the conversation entirely. Gently she grabbed for his arm, and led him a few steps away, closer to the centre of the medbay, daring to leave her bondmate for a second only because he was presently so well distracted by their youngling. And because 'Bee had stepped closer to make certain that said youngling didn't fall if she were to move, which she didn't. She looked up again at the old medic with wide optics, filling quickly with coolant tears and this time one fell before she could help it. "If the worst really happens... if you can't find a way to save him this time. Do you think there might..." she paused a second while more small tears fell and she wiped at them stubbornly with the back of a hand. After a slow intake she said with determination, "do you think there might just be a way to power him down completely well before his processor begins it's final, fatal shut down. That's exactly the thing he fears the most, the thought that terrifies him the point of shaking... just being aware while the lights slowly start to go out..."

"I need a short while to think all this over..."

"Ratchet. Please. I know you'll do your best. We all will. I know that and I thank you. But if you do fail, if this is it... I... I just can't think of letting him suffer in pain and terror. Maybe, if he was just powered down long enough before, the last thing he'd ever know would be just falling into recharge..."

"I can promise you I'll do the very best I can," Ratchet answered, firm and kindly while he gently brushed a tear or two from her optics.

Cybershock, screeching horribly from her place still on the recharge station, made Arcee turned around fast to see what had happened before she could say another word to the old medic. And at nearly the very same moment, a flash of fear so terrible it nearly caused her to freeze where she stood, broke through her still open spark connection to her mate. And with a quick intake to snap herself out of it, when she knew at once it was not her feeling she felt, she ran the five steps back to him.

 _'Help me. Please help me!'_ Knockout's inner voice begged somewhere in her processor. He was crying from hard from panic, and she heard it in his telepathic voice just as surely as she saw it in the tears pouring down his face-plate.

The rough uncontrolled moment of his limbs as connections from his processor sent through his frame without meaningful purpose, made her spark drop at once. Arcee recalled at once, to her own horror, just how during his initial malfunction, seemingly so long ago by then, he'd managed to bang his hands against a wall so hard he could easily have hurt himself. And she understood quickly that this did not happen now only because his body lacked the simple ability to do any thing like that. Still it was enough to alarm and startle the youngling and that's why she must have screamed as she had. Bumblebee, standing close by, where's he'd been watching for her safety, scooped the youngling immediately into his arms, and the little one burst out crying then, once again in obvious despair.

 _'I'm falling,'_ Knockout's telepathic voice mumbled miserly in confusion, and still with great panic. 'W _here... where... am I? Arcee! Where are you. Please... help me!'_

"I'm right beside you," Arcee assured gently assured him quickly. Her vision faded a second, before flashing all too bright, and dimming, as the room began to spin a little and then much more. She knew once again that anything she felt, however frightening or out of place it may have been, it was not her feeling but only feedback through the spark connection.. And certainly his feeling of falling made a lot of sense. Still standing, she felt for a second like her feet would not continue to hold her steady, and she leaned to rest against his frame again, just as much to keep herself from stumbling as to comfort him. "We're still here on base."

"Primary glitch in processor area six, and it looks like the secondary glitch is area two, " Ratchet was saying somewhere nearby, and Arcee knew without looking up that he must have been reading monitors and translating whatever he was seeing for 'Bee who still stood beside him. But in her intent focus on her mate and and anything she could gather from him directly through their spark connection, the old bot's words were barely barely registered at all.

"Frag it all," Ratchet continued in under a second. And it was the urgency and the frustration in his voice that made Arcee at least try to listen then, because this was clearly serious. "We have small glitches showing in area four, one, nine and fifteen. It's triggered a ripple effect through his entire frontal processor."

Bumblebee asked a question, over the sound of the youngling fussing horribly in his arms. And Arcee tried to make out exactly what it was he'd asked wanting to know in turn what the answer would be. But his words were little more then jumbled noise, buried by Knockout's telepathic voice as he started to scream louder in her head. Her spark ached with his pain. And forcing herself to lift her head from his chest panel again, she forced herself to intake. His body continued to tremble and shake, and struggle to move without any purpose. In her head, his voice was only screamed and screamed entirely without even any words now, and the tears he cried quickly covered his face plate.

"Look at me," Arcee said to him again. It had helped at least a little bit once before and she was helplessly at a loss for what else she might actually do by now. Quickly she offered him her hand again, but now he could not hold on at all anymore. So she just held his instead, tightly enough that surely he'd know she was not letting go. As she stepped carefully to her right just a bit so that she knew she for sure he might still see her. "Optics right on mine... there you go."

 _'Ar...cee,'_ his voice cried helplessly in her processor. _'Don't let go. Please... don't let go.'_

 _'Never'_ Arcee promised silently. _'Tell me, what is it you need? What... What can I do?'_

Her simple question, asked of him in the midst of steady growing panic and terror that she could fear clear inside her own mind, in the form of feedback from his, was mostly meant to make him focus on simply answering it instead of only on his terror. And slowly, she felt him calm just slightly, as his faulting processor, struggled hard just to form an answer.

 _'Just hold me,'_ he answered. His telepathic voice was mumbling now, and shaky and slow. _'Talk to me, and don't let me go.'_

 _'Okay,'_ without letting go of the hand she already held, Arcee quickly sat back down in the little folding chair again, so that she could lean easily forward. And gently, yet still firmly, she wrapped her free arm around him again. _'I can do that. You know what? When we get out of here, and get you back home, we're going to plan our first little party in our new apartment. Invite our workmates to show them the new place. Cybershock is nearly a solar cycle old now. It will be a little birthday party for her too..."_

"Glitches now in areas three, seven, eight, and nine," Bumblebee's voice said, from somewhere that sounded so far away, but was really still close behind her. "And areas six and two look like they've gone down completely."

"They have gone down indeed," Ratchet all but growled in frustration close by. And Arcee heard the familiar banging of his hand against a nearby work table, as the old bot vented rage at a losing battle. "And we're clearly about to lose two more."

"R... Ratchet," 'Bee was so obviously anxious as he spoke. "The last time this happened, at the time of his initial malfunction, it was fast glitches and he's snap back out of it again awhile. Why... why not now? It's different this time."

"Area six caused a little ripple that brought down more. Now that's causing cascade failures in the entire processor. He's going to go downhill very fast from here and any second now."

"What about a hard reset?" Bumblebee suggested, quickly. And Ratchet all but dismissed the idea at once.

"We'd need to tear the entire back of his head apart just to get to the reset control safely. Then reassemble it after the fact. It's a good thought, but with his systems already failing, that invasive a thing is a major risk."

" _Arcee'_ Knockout cried silently. His mental voice was more muddled now than ever, and his hand shook terribly in hers. _'No! No! Please... no...'_

Arcee was about to question him gently about exactly what it was he was trying to tell her. What was it, she wondered urgently, that he was saying no to so desperately. And her spark dropped a second later, and she fought back a sudden pressing urge to purge her fuel tank, when she realized it. He may have had no voice left to speak out loud – even his nonsensical strings of words had long dissolved into nothing but static, And he'd since stopped trying to speak completely – but still for his complete lack to commutation with the world outside of himself, he was still aware of everything. It was, she understood with dismay and dread and utter horror, exactly like before. He was feeling himself fading away, and no one else had any way to know that.

 _'Shh. Shh,'_ she said to him silently. And as she did, she held him just a little tighter. _'No one's going to tear you apart. It sounds like Ratchet's dismissed that option. And anyway I'd tell him no in a second if that isn't what you'd want, okay?'_

" _Arcee! I can barely see you. My... visuals are... bad... scrolling, Colours... wrong..."_

" _Your visual processing system is starting to fail. Oh. Don't panic. Everything's alright. Do you still feel your hand in mine?"_

 _'I... I... dunno... yeah. I can. Please don't let go!"_

 _'I'm not letting go. It's okay. It's okay.'_

 _'Cybershock!'_

 _'Do you want to hold her?'_ Arcee asked slowly. She knew just how much she'd have to help him just to do that, but there was no doubt at all in her mind that the youngling, still crying softly in 'Bee's arms, while he worked, tracking monitor readouts, would easily let him.

 _'Yeah.'_

 _'I need to let you go, for just a second,'_ Arcee explained. Her tone was calm, or at least she only hoped it was. But her spark was dropping hard, and taking just one small step, she felt like she would collapse from her shock and her grief. _'I'm not going anywhere. I'm just going to take our baby back from 'Bee._

Bumblebee clearly understood exactly what it was she wanted to do, the second she turned quickly to face him. Because he gently coaxed the baby's head up from his shoulder panel, where she'd laid it down to cry softly in her own sadness and confusion. And he took just a second to gently take Arcee by the arm, preventing her from falling just when she was sure she easily may have done, and carefully he turned to put the baby down on the recharge station again.

Reassuring him all the while though their shared spark connection, Arcee gently moved her bondmate's body – which he was now almost entirely unable to move on his own – placing his arms gently around their youngling's tiny frame as she lay snuffling again against him.

"There you go," she said slowly, quietly and speaking out loud to him now. Gently she placed one of her hands on his lower arm, and the other behind the baby, again to keep her from falling if she moved. "You've got her. And I've got you."

"Areas one and nine are down," Ratchet mumbled in helpless frustration. And Arcee glanced up just a second in dismay to see him just staring at the monitors, because he could not think of anything left to do.

"'Bee I need you to stand by ready to help me if he starts to panic a bit, which I fear he easily might," the old medic said after a second. And in the tone of his voice, he sounded fully decided now. We're putting him into complete power down."

"A complete power down, during this kind of steady processor glitching and shut down?" Bumblebee questioned, clearly baffled by his teacher's instructions. 'Bee was a young bot, who never had had much trouble following orders and direction, and he enjoyed learning by just taking instructions. He was very good at it. But at the same time he never had been one to refrain from a question or three when something made little sense to him and he felt somehow that even an expert at anything really, might have been wrong. "Ratchet, his chances of coming back from a power down now are well under..."

"He's not coming back from any of this," Ratchet snapped. And Arcee, glancing up at him for just another fraction of a second, saw the regret flash across the old bot's optics at once for snapping at his student. She saw his regret over everything, and she knew it included his own self perceived failure, as he shook his head a moment. "We had so little we could have done from the start. And we've done all of that. Our last choice now becomes whether to let him stay awake to know too much as it all ends horribly, or to power him down just for the hope it will be easier..."

Arcee would make it on her own. She knew in a moment of suddenly reflection, that Knockout had been right about that, when he'd told her so himself only several hours before. Of course she _could_ make it. But still that didn't mean she'd ever wanted to have to. And while she held her mate's still so badly trembling hand in hers, and sent him every bit of calmness and her love as she could through their connection, while he struggled to just barely hold onto their youngling – who was now crying so hard again tiny frame shook, and refusing to let him go. - with his arm over her in the position it had been carefully placed in, she wondered so horribly then, just how it would be until the baby had all but forgotten him entirely.

She'd taken, since they'd bonded, to snapping pictures. Photofiles of him in every stage of his progress through rehab and life itself - and plenty with the baby too, laughing on his lap.. (In most he was smiling, because he'd begged her so often to rid their datapads of any where he was certainly not.) And she was glad for each one often images now, because she knew that as her child grew up, those photos, more than anything, could tell the story of just who he had been. She wondered then and asked herself strangely, if she would have done life differently, perhaps chosen not to love him, not to be his mate and all that had led to, if only she'd known...

"I wouldn't have missed this for the world," she said out loud to him, the answer to her own question decided in under a second. "We sure had fun, didn't we?" Within likely minutes, he would be powered down entirely. And giving the progress of his failing condition... too impossibly fast this time, without only hours he would likely be offline. She wanted so bad for him to know, in the final conscious moments he'd ever have, that their time together, cut short though it was, left no source of regret.

"Ratchet," Arcee heard Bumblebee exclaim perhaps too boldly, and she went on listening just as well as she possibly could to their conversation. "What if there was one thing you haven't done yet? One more trick to try, that wouldn't involve partly disassembling him, or invasive repairs that would probably kill him?"

"''Bee..." Ratchet said, not without any compassion. But he never did finish whatever it was he'd started to say. And his words just died in the air as he stood shaking his head sadly.

For all the horrible revelry of the war, between two fast car alt modes, the two well matched bots perhaps fought the most of any. But Knockout had since become one of the young bot's best friends. They'd raced against each other, in friendly competition at first, in their alt modes. And not long at all after Knockout's first tragic malfunction, 'Bee had easily been among the first of his teammates to behave just as though truly felt Knockout was still just another Autobot. Arcee knew he could not stand to see a best friend die, anymore then he could see a bot who was practically his sister's spark break.

"Cybermatter," Bumblebee persisted, with the confidence of someone who truly thought he might just be right. Arcee watched him both sadly and almost hopeful as he turned to Ratchet with determination on his face-plate. "The project is complete now, thanks to Speedbreaker's work. Ratchet, this is what you dreamed when you first started to pursue the work again. A chance of repair for bots without chances, hope when someone is damaged beyond all medical knowledge or technology..."

"Still completely untested," Ratchet pointed out, grumbling with a shake of his head. "I can hardly use a dying patient as a test subject for a brand new idea, that might work only because I've seen it do something interesting once in my career."

"Knockout's life was just as devoted to medical science as yours is," 'Bee countered. And the boldness with which the young bot spoke, was entirely surprising. "If he's going to very soon die, I think it stands to reason he'd want to go out still trying to make medical history. And as long as there is still that one chance this may actually work..."

"I can't think of how I might just be able to look that little baby girl in the optics one day when she's grown, and tell her honestly that I may have passed on one last viable shot at saving her creator," Ratchet mumbled under his intakes. And Arcee glanced up with tear filled optics, to see him staring down at her baby and shaking his head.

Knockout's voice was just as silent now in her head as it had been for a while outside of it. And she sensed him only as a barely conscious hint of awareness somewhere inside her processor and spark. There was hardly any fear left anymore. And that of course was a good thing. But there was so little sense of any emotional at all, or any real awareness, and that was far from good. Still Arcee went right back to sending her feelings to him, only hoping he would still sense it all, at least a little, on some level.

When Ratchet tapped her gently on the shoulder, she was startled so badly from her own intense focus and thoughts, that she nearly jumped out of her body armour. And she struggled to listen carefully when the old bot asked her, quite unexpectedly to make the final call regarding the matter she'd vaguely heard discussed. Knockout was far past a point of being able to give or deny any permissions for himself, though in a far more ideal situation his own opinion most certainly would have mattered greatly. Arcee was his bondmate, and the call fell then to her. Slowly she found herself nodding her head mutely, without daring to hope.

"The plan has changed then," the old medic said quickly. And if there had been any doubt left that what he said was important, the tone of his voice alone would have dashed those doubts fast. He moved as gently as he could have to pick up Cybershock, from where she lay on the recharge station, still holding onto her creator's left hand in both of hers, long after he's lost all ability to hold onto her little frame at all, and his right arm had simply come to flop awkwardly onto the recharge station beside them. The youngling reached a second as though she hoped he might reach back now that she'd been moved. And when nothing happened at all, she moved to cry softly into the old bots shoulder panel. "Instead of a complete power down, I'm going to give him another, much stronger dose of sedative medication. We're so far from anything close to exact science on this. But I feel like one litre of liquid form cybermatter, injected slowly into his energon line is a good starting point with this." Beside him, Bumblebee nodded his understanding and he held out his arms to take the youngling.

"How can I help?" Arcee asked quickly. She wrung her hands together, and was well aware of her frame trembling as the stress and grief, uncertainty and horror of the entire day began to catch up to her, and quickly become almost too much. She stepped a few few steps, just enough to be well out of her teammates' way, but still close as she could be to her bondmate and her child. Hope was becoming tempting, and stubbornly she fought it back, not daring to hope for a thing, terrified she would only be crushed if she did.

"You're going right into some medically aided recharge yourself," Ratchet answered, firmly. And Arcee, dismayed, stood a second blinking at him.

"You need rest, badly," he explained before she could even find her voice again, to protest. "And I'm not about to send you off home with the orders to simply get a good night's recharge and stop back in the morning. You'd never sleep, and I know that."

"Ratchet. I'm not about to just..." Arcee's protest, however firm, however pleading, was interrupted, with the old medic quite unexpectedly lifted her from the floor and plopped her down quickly onto her mate's recharge station.

"No use in me calling this a bad idea," he mumbled quickly. He held out his hand, containing two large blue pills, glaring at her until she slowly reached out to take them, trusting him because her mind really was beyond any will to do otherwise. "That's exactly where's he'd want you to be."

"Umm, Ratchet," Arcee heard 'Bee say quietly, as she carefully and somewhat hesitantly put her arms lightly around her mate's frame as soon as she'd lay down close to him. "I... I'm sorry. I might have a situation at home."

Whatever it was that the old medic had given her to take, it's effects were certainly fast acting. And it was in an already half asleep state that she realized 'Bee must have answered his commlink.

"A comm from Speedbreaker," the young bot said quickly. And his tone showed just how much he was clearly torn between duty to his family and duty to his work.

Arcee heard Ratchet quickly tell him to go and to hurry about it. Because she would have have comm'd if her reasons had not been truly serious ones.

"Your med scanner, 'Bee," Ratchet's voice sounded far away by then. "Never run off without your scanner..."

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

"Speedy?" Bumblebee called the second the door to their apartment had slid open in front of him. No answer greeted him as one usually did, and the door to wash station sat wide open. Odd, he noted quickly, because he could hear water running hard inside the shower.

"Speedbreaker!" he said louder, far more urgent now as he stepped toward their wash station with his spark beating faster.

 _'I need you home,'_ her message to him had said simply, scrolling in simple text across his visual comm. _'It might be an emergency.'_ And of course he'd hurried back as fast as he possibly could, speeding. She knew well he was tied up with a serious emergency already, and he knew she would never have comm'd like that if hers was not just as much one, or even more so.

"Bee!" Speedbreaker called from inside the wash station. Her voice, calling loud over the sound of the pouring water and oil, was shaky and scared. "I... I'm in... here."

Bumblebee found his mate in the shower, sitting oddly on the metal tiles of the soaked wet floor, with the stream from the tap high above flowing over her head. She leaned badly against the edge, one hand tight in a fist and the other holding tightly to the small ledge the surrounded their shower enclosure.

"Primus, Speedy, what happened?" 'Bee's first thought was that she may have slipped and fallen while simply bathing. He imagined for a fleeting second that she'd clearly hurt herself and possibly badly if she'd called him home because of it. But that would not have explained the open door, and something still seemed off.

"'Bee... the newspark." Her answer was urgent and fearful and it made him catch himself at once and clue in to the obvious. His optics went at once to her spark chamber. And he noticed already the slight gap in places where the plating was just beginning to slide apart on her body's own accord.

"Scrap. It's clearly been hours already," he mumbled, dismayed as he grabbed hold her her gently and pulled her out onto the wash station floor, where she half sat up, leaning weakly against a wall. "What were you thinking waiting so long?" He reached at once for his med scanner, glad as anything that Ratchet had stopped him from leaving it behind.

"I... I knew you were busy," Speedy answered, whimpering a little before she gasped with pain and seemed to struggle against what could easily have been terrible scream. "I thought it was nothing at first. Just the newspark shifting a bit too much. So I... I got into the shower, hoping the pain would pass in there."

Bumblebee sat himself down on the floor beside her, and gently he pulled her against him, wrapping his arms around her so he could hold her for a moment. Her frame was retaining so much heat that the water on her body from the shower was turning already to vapour that streamed off of her as it cooled in the air. And she whimpered against him loudly, with hands reaching like they were searching for something to grab onto.

"Relax," he said slowly, intaking once carefully, so that she might too. She grabbed for his hand, the one closest to hers, and she held it hard enough he thought she might just injure him, however mildly. "Yeah, I know. Easier said that done. How is your pain level?"

"Out of ten?" Speedy mumbled her question against his platting and promptly she went right back to her quiet whimpering again.

"Yeah."

"Twenty-five." Her little whimpers were fast becoming cries. And looking at her chest panel the best he could manage to without letting go or forcing her to sit back again, 'Bee saw the first hints of bright whitish light showing between now wider cracks in the spaces of her body armour.

"You might just be so close now. Okay. It's okay. It's okay."

"Is this... is this supposed to happen?" Speedbreaker looked at her own panel, and she blinked with uncertainty at the steady growing light from within her own body.

"Exactly what's supposed to happen," 'Bee assured her, and he forced a little smile to reinforce his point. Speedy had talked at length to Ratchet of course, about many things newspark related. Both of them had. But still she had never even seen the process of spark separation before without a massive amount of unforeseen complications involved.

"We've got to get back to the base medbay," he continued quickly, hurriedly thinking out loud. "I've got to comm for a bit of help..." His mind ran fast through several possibilities, quickly discarding them as he remembered the serious emergency that had kept him away in the first place. Finally, he made up him mind and nodded firmly. "Bulkhead. He's certainly big enough to easily carry you."

"'Bee," said Speedbreaker, through continued steady whimpers of pain. Slowly she lifted her head from his armour so that her tear filled optics could look into his. "Please don't be angry..."

No sooner had she moved to look at him, than she lowered her head again so that she could scream loudly into his metal plating as pain tore through her upper frame, and the light grew brighter.

"I'm not angry. I could never be angry at you. It was my fault you waited so long to call. I never should have left you on your own all day while I knew this could happen anytime..."

* * *

"Help me!" Speedbreaker screamed, loud enough to nearly shake the armour on the frames of any bots nearby. And tears fell from her optics as she was set down gently as possible, in a backroom of the hospital wing. Instantly she was trying her hardest just to turn to first one side and then the other, clearly seeking a most comfortable position where none could be found. "I'm dying! I'm dying!"

"Speedbreaker," Ratchet said firmly, hurrying over as fast as he could, with his trusted old scanner in hand. He shook his head just slightly and chucked under his intakes with mild amusement, despite the seriousness of the situation. "You aren't dying. I need you to listen to me. I need you flat on your back just like we put you, and your arms down at your sides if you can. You panel is almost entirely open now. We're just going to let it go a tiny bit more, and we should be able to easily grab the newspark gently and help it out."

"I'm not ready," Speedbreaker screamed, just as loud as before. The little bot had always been by nature a quiet one, never known to make much noise at all, if any. And both Bumblebee and Ratchet exchanged looks of shocked dismay, and certainly compassion, over her surprising ability to scream like that in the first place. "I can't, I can't! I'm dying, I'm dying!"

"It's not too late is it, to give her something for pain?" 'Bee questioned, his compassion turning by then to concern, as his mate screamed again, a wordless scream of pain this time. And he could see so easily, that she was starting to panic.

"We are cutting everything so close," Ratchet answered quickly, thinking out loud. "But I think we can still make it work just fine. That should help her with nerves too. I've just got to hook her up to an energon line here quick..."

"No! No way! Nooo!" Speedy screamed, in response to that.

It was just another thing she was screaming over, and perhaps far too unreasonably frightened of by then. And Bumblebee was, at least for a moment, taken aback entirely by just how panicked she really was, since they'd gotten to the base. But Speedy was a refugee. She never fought in the war. Never been half way to scrapped even once, or even hurt far less. Her only real experience of being in a medbay at all as a patient was for simple scans of herself and the newspark's health, and once for a small and completely painless repair of a rusty knee joint. 'Bee could feel all to clearly through their shared spark connection when he tried to, just how much the bright overhead lights were scaring her badly, and how the pain, worsening by the minute only made that all seem far worse still.

"Just a tiny little pinch okay," 'Bee said calmly, and when his mate grabbed his hand and squeezed it far too hard in her growing pain, he just let her. "I'm not sure you'll feel it at all with the pain you're already in. No no, don't move, don't move. Lay flat like that. Very soon now we'll have our own little youngling in our arms."

"Y... yeah," Speedbreaker mumbled a shaky answer. And she managed to smile just a little through her pain, before she screamed again, and tried to roll sideways again.

"What colour do you think our baby's paint will be when she finally gets her colours?" 'Bee asked her. The question was one he's thought of quickly and quite out of nowhere, in an effort to distract her as Ratchet carefully fed thin wire tubing through a gap in the armour plates of her lower arm.

"I dunno," Speedbreaker answered after thinking a second. She was clearly as far from happy as she;d been since he'd found her at home. But at least her screaming had stopped as she focused a little on conversation.

"Well. My bet is on blue. Bright cobalt blue... maybe some white mixed in."

"Blue?" Speedy almost laughed then, as the medication quickly began to have at least some effect and she felt even slightly better. She looked at him with a half sideways look that showed confusion. "How could he possibly be..."

It was most unlikely of course. Blue was so from from the orange and yellow of their combined primary colours. And there was no known blue paint code in their known genetic coding for generations. But it had made her smile, and that's all he'd hoped for.

 **Scene Break Scene Break** **Scene Break Scene Break**

Arcee gained awareness slowly at first, as light pouring through a window behind her from the early morning sun, hit her closed optics. She was confused at first, wondering exactly where she was, because of course she was not in her own familiar recharge room. And with her processor slowly catching up then, she recalled with dread everything that had happened, before she'd been practically forced into recharge.

Her arms were still wrapped tight around Knockout's frame, and one of her hands held onto one of his carefully. And it was with a feeling of wonder and joy that she realized quickly, he was actually holding onto hers as well as she held his. He looked at her with open optics as she stared at him blinking. And his face-plate showed a state of shock, confusion and still more of his terror and panic. Coolant tears that had covered his face-plate the night before, had dried into streaks of light bluish mess. But still, he was _looking_ at her.

"Knockout?" she said in nearly whisper under her intakes. And her spark pounded just a little with her growing hope, when he actually smiled slightly in reply.

Cybershock's little body was tucked tightly between the two of them, her head against her carrier's chest panel and her right hand stuffed into her mouth. And Arcee only realized she was there at all, when the baby's foot kicked her lightly, as she wiggled.

"We... we did it..." Knockout mumbled slowly, quiet and shaky. But he had spoken out loud. And his words made perfect sense.

"Yes," Arcee said back. Spark pounding harder now. And she fought back tears again – but this time she all but grinned though them. "I... Think we did."

"I brought the little one back to you, sometime well into the night," Ratchet explained, after he'd hurried over with his familiar old scanner in hand. "Not long at all after I realized he was rapidly getting better instead of much worse as I feared."

"Th...thank you, Ratchet," Arcee mumbled, still disbelieving as she struggled just a little to sit herself up without disturbing the baby, who turned still asleep, to lay against her creator. Whatever it was he had given her, she noted more than ever how much she did not like its after effects.

"Bumblebee and Speedbreaker have a brand new youngling boy," Ratchet said, speaking slowly as he went about scanning Knockout's frame and then properly re-scanning twice more, while he held the recharging child. "Turns out Speedy certainly meant it when she'd comm'd about an emergency. Little guy was born not two hours after they got back here. He took right away to his frame, and it looks like he's loving having a body of his own. Speedbreaker did so well too, for a first time carrier. She was pretty scared at first, which is perfectly understandable. But she did just fine.

Ratchet was sharing the wonderful news partly because of course he too excited not to. But also, he did it it seemed simply to see just how well Knockout could listen and comprehend it all. Arcee understood that in under a second. And she smiled happily when her mate smiled at the news. Clearly showing just how he followed it perfectly.

"Oh, everyone's awake now. Great to see that," Bumblebee's voice from somewhere still a ways away. And Arcee realized with dismay that she had not ever heard the door open or close behind him, nor had she registered the sound of his footsteps. And she blinked in near disbelief at the tiny youngling he held in his arms. One with his bright yellow colour, and Speedbreaker's shinning chrome highlights. 'Bee hurried across the room toward them.

"The little one there will surely be proud of his creator one day," Ratchet said gesturing toward the new youngling, as he quickly reconnected Knockout to a processor scanner, he'd been disconnected from sometime in the night. And Knockout, simply let him without struggle, though he did look undeniably uneasy about it for a second or two. "Bumblebee is going to make a wonderful medi-bot. I knew that from the start, but if I'd had any doubts left, they'd surely be gone now." he turned away from his work just a second to look his young student in the optics. "You took a huge risking even wanting to try exactly what we did. And it took a lot of nerve, as such an early level student, to insist you confidently that you might just have been right. But you were right, and somehow you clearly knew it. That's the instinct I've tried hard before to explain... The base instinct relied so heavily on, by what will one day slowly become your medical programming."

"This is Hotwire," Bumblebee said, gesturing with his optics to his youngling, laying still in his arms and with his optics closed contently, and not even bothering to comment on his own achievement in his training. Anyone who knew him surely knew that to him, there was little need of such pride in that. Like anything else he'd done in life, he was simply doing his job just as well as he could. The young bot laughed a little, mostly in Knockout's direction, in a clear, discrete effort to distract him from the scanning process. "Speedy is resting for a while now. And I was finally able to convince her to give him up a while so I could show him off, because of it."

"'Bee!" Ratchet exclaimed to his young student, looking intently at the screen of the processor monitor, and gesturing right at it so the young bot (and the others as well) would look at it too. "We didn't only save Knockout's life by providing his body with the means to self repair the processor quickly enough. Look at these readings... check out the full frame internal wiring network..."

"We've got almost full connectivity to the left leg and foot, as well as the left arm and hand," the young bot, mused, looking over the readings carefully, and so clearly using every bit of understanding he had thus far gained, just to understand exactly what it was he was looking at on the screen.

"W... wait..." Arcee said, shocked at the still unspoken implications. Her spark had slowly settled down, but suddenly it began to pound again with her amazement. "That could mean.." She grabbed Knockout's hand, - his left one – in her excitement. And only then did she notice as he grabbed right back, that he did do a just slightly better job of holding onto hers.

"This will be a long road still," Ratchet explained. His voice was calm, profession as ever. But still a hint of a smile showed on his face-plate. "Much higher connectivity will do nothing about the weakness of his limbs due to previous damage. But I have little doubt now that with a good amount of work, after we restart with rehab, Knockout will eventually walk again."

 _~ End ~_

 **Notes / Well I guess that's that. This entire story was one I worked on for over a year, and that amazes me. If I'm honest I'm a bit sad to be finished because obviously I did have this project for so long. It's exciting though at the same time because this means new stuff to write.**

 **I did know how this would end. I've known from well before I wrote the middle, just how I would end the story. Still writing it was sad as anything.**

 **Thanks everyone for all the wonderful reviews and the feedback. I truly mean it. I would have continued writing this even if not for any of those. But it certainly is harder to do, with no way of knowing if anyone actually thinks its any good or not. Be on the lookout for the start of the soon upcoming second part of this, 'So What Happens Now.'**


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